Read Online The Telling by Alexandra Sirowy - Free Book Online

around corners. And it isn’t for lack of trying. I look for him on the deck of passing sailboats and in the clouds threaded in the trees on the ridge opposite our house. I look for his name spelled out in the pebbles of our driveway. I look for his profile in the bark of trees. He’s never there.
    Willa accelerates past the couple on the bench. The boy has next to nothing in common with Ben. His features didn’t blur to resemble Ben’s. He didn’t gesture in a Ben-ish way. He was Ben. This leaves me feelingunreliable. I crack the window and let the breeze dry out my eyeballs.
    We pass the grassy square and the amphitheater where bands play on Sunday nights. Then the historic cinema that features foreign films. Kids at school mostly go there to make out and for this truffle-and-sea-salt popcorn that’s practically world famous. I had my first-ever date there with our school’s math decathlon team captain. Theo had shaggy blond hair and dopey, sweet eyes. We dated for three months during my freshman year. He ate lunch in the one hundred hall at school, which is just one removed from the quad and its populars. Willa and I ate in the library with a rotating population of study groups. Theo and I shared a handful of closed-mouth kisses, and I liked the way his bangs swooped over his forehead, almost in his crescent eyes. Then he opened his mouth during a kiss and I got a mouthful of burp-flavored saliva. I didn’t like him enough for that. He wasn’t who I wanted to be kissing anyway.
    Although I am usually nauseated recalling Theo’s slippery tongue, tonight it helps to think of ordinary things.
    I look left in time to see a single teardrop slide down Willa’s cheek. “Willa?” I strain against the seat belt to take in her whole face.
    â€œJust don’t, okay?” she says. “Wait to talk to me tomorrow.”
    â€œAre you okay?”
    â€œRosalind-effing-Franklin, Lana, just don’t.” She slaps the steering wheel. Her eyes flick to mine, and she must see my bewilderment because she adds softly, “Rosalind Franklin basically discovered what human DNA looks like. You should know that one.”
    A sheepish smile from me. Willa’s always used her idols rather than curse words. As a kid, Willa would tell me, “I’ll know I’ve made it when people start taking my name in vain.”
    â€œI’m just so tired and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret,” she says. “I want to get home and talk to my mom about what happened tonight, before she hears it from someone else and I’m in thirty more kinds of trouble that I didn’t call her and that I was with those kids.” Willa’s mother is our school’s principal; Principal Owen is not so affectionately called Gant High’s P.O., as in parole officer . Although I’ve convinced Willa to hang out with the core a bunch this summer, Willa is increasingly worried that her mom is going to realize just how much time she’s spending with the kids P.O. refers to as “fast.” It’s probably only because we have so many years built up of never getting into trouble that Willa’s been able to fly under the radar the last four weeks.
    My wanting to go to parties and Willa’s reluctance and sometimes refusal to go hasn’t caused a rift between us, because although Willa and I have been bests since the sixth grade, we were never the kind of inseparable girls who did each other’s pedicures and shared a sleeping bag. Plus, I had Ben.
    When we were younger, Ben and I invited Willa on adventures. P.O. rarely let her come, because Dad and Diane weren’t there to supervise. Supervision was always a big deal for Willa’s mom and not a priority at the McBrook house.
    â€œWilla—”
    â€œTomorrow.” She gives me a grave sideways look as the Prius glides soundlessly up the driveway. I add wait-until-tomorrow to the