For the Best Read Online Free PDF Page A

grapes from his tray.
     
Present
    In the lunch room, Della and I chose a spot
near the window. Peripherally, I saw a table of classmates staring
pointedly at us.
    “What do you think that is about?” Della
motioned with her head towards them.
    “Does it matter?” Once it had, now all I saw
when I looked their way was teenage gossips.
    The cafeteria chair on my left scraped as it
slid back. “You went to Sacred Academy, right?”
    Is she asking or confirming? She was
smug. I ignored her, didn’t answer.
    “That yearly ritual thing, you look
familiar.”
    I cringed. “There is no ritual thing. It’s
something the football team makes up to look cool.” I imagined the
images, the ones I wished I had never seen.
    “Made up, huh? I heard they made the mistake
of posting it and the site was hit so many times it crashed,” I
watched the way her full mouth moved as she spoke. She would have
been a target.
    I went back to my food. As if entitled to a
response, she harrumphed and followed with a hair toss on her
return to her gossiping clique.

    I was all day dreamy and not in a good way
for the last three classes wanting to text Tanner about what
happened at lunch. We’d been together the last night at his house.
I’d wanted out of hell and would have slept most anywhere else.
When I’d left at 5 a.m. he was still in bed, flat on his back
wearing nothing but a frown.
    When I got to my father’s residence, I snuck
back in my room. Gator was sleeping in my bed since I wasn’t. The
boxer pjs and tank top I drove home in seemed a bad choice. My face
was red and swollen from crying.
    “What’s wrong?” Lainey asked. I wanted to
believe she cared.
    “Nothing.”
    I showered and dressed, made myself go to
school only to replay every moment of the time I’d just spent with
Tanner.
    We’d gone to bed. In the safety of darkness,
I tried to broach the subject of Tanner’s cheating. “Do I still
turn you on?”
    “You turn me inside out you turn me on so
bad,” he whispered and mistook my question as an invitation. He
scooted closer and spooned me up against the wall I was pivoted
toward. He reached across me to pull my hand from my stomach,
unclenched my fist and linked us together, palm against palm.
    I began to shudder as I cried. “Sshhh...It’s
going to be okay,” he whispered in the dark.
    I flopped over so we were front to front. I
could see my mom, or at least her urn. I’d given it to Tanner for
safe keeping. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it in the storage
unit and it seemed cruel to take my mom’s remains to the place her
husband and his mistress resided. We’d spread some of her in the
ocean from his surfboard not long after her death. I didn’t
disperse all of her that day.
    “I decided where I’m spreading the rest of
her.”
    “Where?” he asked softly kissing my
neck.
    “Glacier, Montana.”
    “Why there?” he mumbled.
    “Because we went there on a family trip the
first time she got sick. We stayed at this Swiss looking lodge in
the park. On our last night, Mom got very quiet and reflective as
she looked through the digital images on the camera of our trip.
Then she turned to us and said, ‘Long after everyone is gone, and
life has removed any trace of us from this place it will still be
here. I want to be here too.’”
    He pulled me closer. There were no gaps
between our bodies. We made love. Once again I betrayed myself.

Chapter 6
     
     
    Hanna
    Another morning in hell, I readied for
school. From the kitchen, I heard the shower come on upstairs and
five minutes later Lainey joined me helping herself to a bowl of
Fruit Loops.
    “Where are the rents?” she asked.
    “Still in bed.”
    “You look much better than yesterday,” she
said as she studied me.
    “It’s the booze and pills.”
    “You would know.” She dug at my vulnerable
spot.
    “Thanks.”
    The smell of fruity vitamins wafted off the
multi-colored circles in my bowl. I looked up and held her
gaze.
    My dad came