Everything You Want Read Online Free PDF Page B

getting a divorce, and they’d sent him away to work as a camp counselor the summer before our senior year. Maybe it was missing him so much that made me tell him the truth about how I felt when he came back, maybe it was thinking that, loving him, I could somehow make up for what was happening in his family. I didn’t even know I was going to say it. I just did. Then I burst into tears.
    I swear. I feel like I’m going to cry right now, just remembering it. The moment floods into me. Josh just sitting there, dumbfounded, staring at me for the longest time. Then bumbling around, telling me what a swell person I was, just not that kind of person, at least not for him, not now anyway—and finally bolting from the car and practically running up the sidewalk to his house. He spent the next week avoiding me. I said I was sorry; I tried to talk to him. I said, really, it was okay if he didn’t feel the same way. He was my best friend and that was the most important thing in the world to me. That was when he started being mean.
    No way I’m going there . Not now. I look at Tiff, leaning back against Matt on the narrow bunk. He turns on her little TV with the remote, channel surfs. She looks sleepy. What would it be like, I wonder: that kind of comfort with a boy, the feel of your body against his? On the other hand, they act like an old married couple already. I don’t want that .
    What do I want, though—aside from being fifteen and best friends with Josh Morgan again? Life as a no-max credit card: yeah, it’s a fabulous thing. But what I really want is a way out of the life I’m in. I want to care about something and someone enough to give my whole self to it, to see it through. I want not to be lonely.
    None of which has a thing to do with money.
    Except—and I feel a sucker-punch of dread—being rich, I no longer have any excuse for maintaining the status quo. We’re millionaires, but so what? I’m still my old, clueless self. And now I’m going to have to do something about it.

Five
    An elementary education major, Tiffany believes that the door of our dorm room offers an excellent opportunity to develop her bulletin board decorating skills. She keeps a stash of construction paper in her desk, also stencils, stickers, various seasonal decorations, and a world-class selection of markers. So I’m not too surprised when I get back from class the next afternoon and see a huge sign stuck on our door:
    CONGRATULATION$ EMMA!
    The cutout letters are green, of course. There are visual aids, too. Magazine pictures—a mink coat, diamond jewelry, a Ferrari, a chateau in the Alps. All this draped with toilet paper printed to look like money. Where in the hell did Tiffany find that ?
    I hear voices inside, giggling, and I know a celebration awaits me. I imagine myself like one of those cartoon characters who’s just placed a bomb, tiptoeing away in an exaggerated fashion, then bursting outside, running—somewhere, anywhere—as fast as my legs can carry me. As a matter of fact, I’m truly considering escape, but Tiffany has bat’s radar. She flings open the door and drags me inside.
    “Surprise!” everyone yells.
    Then they all start talking at once.
    “Oh my God, you are so lucky!”
    “Fifty million dollars!”
    “That is so cool!
    “What are you going to do ?”
    Get the hell out of here is not what they want to hear, so I avoid the question altogether. I don’t even attempt to explain that we didn’t actually get the whole fifty million, which I’d tried to explain to Tiffany and vowed never to try to explain to anyone else. Like seventeen million dollars is so different from fifty, really ? Like whoever I might try to explain it to is going to say, “Oh, seventeen million dollars. That’s no big deal at all.” I just dig into the feast of junk food they’ve assembled. Taco chips with salsa, Cheez-Its, double-fudge brownies. This I can speak about with honest enthusiasm.
    I chow down, listening to the