Jeremiah Quick Read Online Free PDF Page B

the goddamned
hill.
    "I remember the fallout more than the day.
Do you realize I had to have Becky Brewer rewrite every absence
excuse my mother wrote for the next two and a half years ?"
    His mocking laugh came from right next to
her ear. "Such a goody-two-shoes, you were," and she nodded, the
top of her head bumping his jaw, making his teeth click
together.
    "What about it?" she asked, to cover the
fact that she didn't remember the details. "We missed the
parade."
    "Fuck the parade. We had our own, through
the skywalk, around the ice arena."
    "It was the first time I'd seen curling,"
she said, thinking of the push of brooms and the heavy, slow slide
of the stones across the ice.
    "It was the first time I saw you –
away from everyone and without the good-girl mask."
    She didn't feel like laughing anymore, in
fact, she felt like she hated him, and wanted to hurt him, bruise
him. He really was cruel.
    "And you didn't like me, still," she said,
the words a hot breeze, dry as dust, more pathetic than any of her
tears.
    "It wasn't like that," he said, and his
right hand pulled free from her right pocket and wrapped around
her, so he had both arms around her now, holding tight.
    "What was it, then?"
    "It was that you tamed me with chocolate,
capable of trapping me forever with your kindness and your
sunshine. Dark things shrivel in the light. I wasn't ready to stop
being who I was, or to become the person you would make me. And I
knew when I was finally ready, I had to have a boy. And that's
something I could not change. Not even for you."
    She thought about those words, just resting
against him, letting her body relax. She liked the feel of him
against her spine, long and lean, stick-thin, and so fragile the
wind might decide to take him away. Who was anchoring whom, she
wondered for a second, but only very gently.
    So. He was gay. And yet.
    The wet crotch of her underwear reminded her
there was more to sex than orientation or love. Regardless of love,
there was and always would be a bit of Mine attached to
every thought of him, every memory.
    He steered her away from the wall, and back
to his car.
    He didn't get in, but leaned against the
passenger door, his face in clear view by a nearby streetlamp. She
watched his jaw tighten so hard the muscle in his face jumped. He
watched her too, his odd eyes illuminated by the light. He closed
them, as if he didn't want to see her, and she could see them
moving beneath the lids, like REM sleep. Or like he was
thinking.
    She could have run, then. To another car, or
toward the building where surely someone was looking at a map or
buying something out of the vending machine, or taking a leak. She
could have, but it wasn't a real live thought.
    After a minute or so, he opened his eyes,
and he looked surprised to see her still standing there.
    "I could take you home, right now."
    She wasn't sure what he meant. He wasn't
asking, yet it felt like a question. "Do you want to?" she
asked.
    He shrugged. "No. But it would be the right
thing to do."
    Yeah, probably. He already wasn't good for
her marriage. But then she pictured herself at home alone, a few
minutes from now, her phone lost down the hill, her car abandoned
at the shopping center. Jeremiah driving away for another twenty
years.
    Even inside her head it felt awful and
restless and lonely.
    "I… well. It's up to you. You're the
teacher. It's always been up to you."
    Just saying the words started a hollow ache
in the center of her chest. She cried when she was told he was
dead. Just… go home now? How could she?
    An expression flashed across his face she
didn't know how to read. It looked like a warning, or like he was
laughing at some internal joke he wasn't going to share. It was...
disconcerting. She'd never been afraid of him, but for a fraction
of a second she wondered if she should be.
    He stepped aside and she got into the car.
When she pulled the heavy door closed, it latched into place with a
dull and solid thunk.
    Jeremiah