Read Online Why Can't I Be You by Allie Larkin - Free Book Online Page B

stood on the left side of the balcony and looked out to the right, you could see Snoqualmie Falls.
    “This room is amazing,” she said.
    There was a citronella candle and a book of matches on the little cast-iron table next to the balcony chairs. Myra lit it, and I ran inside to make coffee in the mini coffeemaker on the dresser.
    We sat out on the balcony, clutching our mugs for warmth. It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t exactly balmy.
    “When we were kids, did you ever think we’d be here?” Myra asked.
    “No,” I said. It was truthful at least.
    “So, who are you now?” she asked. “You seem different. You’re not as frantic. You listen.” She waved her arms around. “You’re not bouncing off the walls. What changed?”
    “Everything.” The cool air made goose bumps on my arms.
    “Where were you?” Myra asked, leaning back in her chair and putting her feet up on the railing.
    “Just living life, I guess,” I said. It was lame, but I couldn’t think of what else to say. I didn’t know where everything left off for her and Jessie.
    There were a few stars peeking out from behind the clouds.
    “Where did you end up going to college?”
    “Ithaca,” I said, because if she didn’t know where Jessie had gone, I might as well be honest about all the other details of my life. “The college, not Cornell.”
    “Well, yeah,” she said, laughing. “There’s no way you had the grades for Cornell.”
    For some stupid reason, I was offended. I wanted to tell her that I had gotten good grades in high school. I’d even gotten a scholarship. But she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about Jessie Morgan’s grades.
    “So where do you live now?” she asked. “I can’t believe I don’t even know.”
    “Rochester,” I said.
    “Minnesota?”
    “New York.”
    “But not like New York, New York,” Myra said. “Right?”
    “More like south of Toronto, New York.”
    “Is it freezing cold all the time?”
    “Yeah. In the winter. But you get used to it.” Of course, I’d lived in Rochester my whole life. I was born used to it. But it was something to say. Something benign.
    “I didn’t even know you applied to Ithaca. We checked everywhere we could think of. Me and Fish. We even e-mailed some girl named Jessica Morgan at Florida State, and a J. Morgan at the U of O. We thought maybe one of them was you, but neither of them wrote back.”
    She looked at me, and the way her forehead wrinkled and her eyes looked so sad made me wish I could have somehow pretended to be Jessie then too. I would have written back, said something kind, ended the wonder.
    “Why did you leave us?” Myra said. “I mean, if it’s okay to ask.”
    “Of course it’s okay to ask,” I said. “But I don’t know if I have a good answer.”
    “Was it everything with your parents?” Myra said softly.
    “Yeah,” I said. I thought about everything with my parents. If I’d had the guts and the chance to disappear from everything they were, from all the weight they dumped on me—cleaning up after my drunk mom, pretending my dad didn’t have a new girlfriend every weekend—I might have left. I might have never told anyone where I was going. “It was just too much, you know?”
    Myra put her arm around me and leaned her head on my shoulder. “You didn’t have to leave me, you know. You could have told me. Any secret in the world, I would have kept for you.”
    “I’m really sorry,” I said.
    “Don’t be. You know the thing I’ve learned the most? That everything looks different when you’re a kid. It’s like Alice in Wonderland. Nothing is as it seems, and then you get older and get to decide if you want to go back and see everything the way it really is or if you just want to move on.”
    “So which is it?” I asked. “What are you supposed to decide?”
    “I’m not sure,” Myra said. “Remains to be seen, I guess. If you poke at a sore spot, do you stop feeling the hurt or does it get