I'm Not Her Read Online Free PDF

her walk up the long walkway, past the lions, to the front. She rings the doorbell and I wait with her, holding my breath until it opens. Devon’s gelled hair is visible from where I sit. He smiles, puts an arm around her, and pulls her inside. She looks small and fragile next to him and then the door closes.
    “Great,” I mutter to myself.
    I don’t move, but it’s so quiet the bark of dogs down the street is my background music. A few minutes pass and then boredom crushes my brain. I think about the 7-11, but surprisingly don’t want to eat anything. Not even with my sister’s five bucks.
    I open the glove box and pull out the iPod she always leaves there, and then get out of the car, clicking the doors locked behind me.
    I shove her ear buds in my ears and turn on music, wrinkling my nose at a blast of a top-forty pop song, and skip by her selection of crappy music until I reach a song by Hedley that I can stomach. I walk for a while, and I’m the only one on the street. No one passes me or is outside looking after their house or anything. It’s almost creepy, and I imagine serial killers or zombies and hurry back to the car, climb inside, lock the doors, and sit with my eyes closed, listening to bad music. Eventually Kristina leaps into the car and my heart skips. I pull the headphones from my ears as she slams the door behind her.
    “Hey,” I say, and sit up straighter. “You okay?”
    She nods and giggles, but her eyes fill with tears.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “What do you think is wrong?”
    Then, as if her neck breaks, her head flops down to the steering wheel and she grips the wheel with both hands. Her back starts to shake and her knuckles turn white. She heaves and gulps and tries to control herself. I pat her on the back but she doesn’t respond to me so I take my hand away.
    I look out the window at Devon’s house. Her body shakes harder. I reach out my hand again and touch her hair. Her soft blond hair. Hair I’ve pretended not to envy since I was old enough to recognize how beautiful it was and how different my orangey hair was. I’ve always secretly loved her hair. Even with the new highlights.
    I swallow hard and wonder if she’ll lose her hair to cancer. I don’t want her to. I don’t want her to have cancer.
    “It’s okay,” I say over and over, and I’m the one petting her now, stroking her hair as if she’s my dog or cat. For a moment, she lets me, and it’s yet another sign that our lives have done a one-eighty.
    And then she starts to hiccup and snort and it’s impossible to tell if she’s laughing or crying. Her hand reaches over and grabs mine, and she grips so tightly it hurts, but I don’t say a word or try to pull back. She lifts her head from the steering wheel.
    “Keys,” she says, and holds her palm up in the air.
    I take a second to compose myself as she lets my hand go.
    “Hurry, Tess. We have to leave now,” she squeals, as if she’s being chased by rabid demons. I yank them from my pocket and plop them in her palm.
    She starts to giggle softly again and then, while I stare at her, concerned, she takes a few deep breaths, shoves the keys in the ignition, starts the car, puts it in drive, and peels out without looking back at Devon’s house.
    She speeds down the block and onto a main road.
    “So,” I finally ask, my voice a half-whisper. “What did he say when you told him?”
    “Told him what?” she asks.
    “Um, that you have cancer.”
    She gives me a sideways glance before she focuses back on the road. She’s driving slower and I’ve stopped fearing for my life. But she chuckles again. Soon she’s hiccupping and coughing. I look around the road outside us, glad there’s hardly any traffic, because she snorts and wipes tears with one hand and drives with the other.
    She clears her throat. “I didn’t tell him, Tess,” she says, breathing in and out like she’s doing yoga from the classes she and Mom sometimes go to. “I’m not going to tell