Killer Swell Read Online Free PDF Page B

forehead.
    â€œYou asked me earlier if I was alright,” she said. “When we got off the ferry. And I said I was.”
    I was puzzled. “And you’re not?”
    Kate looked at me, her green eyes sad. She was trying to smile but it wasn’t reaching her face.
    â€œNo,” she said. “I’m not.”
    We sat there quietly for a few minutes, watching the people stroll up and down the walk, their sunburnt faces glowing in the evening air. They looked comfortable, carefree, happy to be on an island off the coast of southern California. Everything that, at that moment, I was not.
    â€œSo what’s wrong?” I finally asked.
    Kate folded her arms across her chest, tugging at the sleeves of her white cotton blouse. She turned to me, but her eyes were just missing my face.
    â€œUs, Noah,” she said. “Us is what’s wrong.”
    Any time a girl breaks up with you, it’s painful. Always. But it may never be more painful than when you hear it for the first time.
    I leaned back into the stone bench. “What’s wrong with us?”
    She looked away for a moment, biting down on her bottom lip.
    â€œI’m leaving next week,” she said.
    â€œI know. So?”
    She turned back to me. “So what happens then?”
    I shrugged. “You get on a plane and go to Princeton?”
    She frowned, faint lines of irritation tying up around her eyes. “Noah, you know what I’m talking about.”
    â€œNo, I don’t,” I said. “We came over here to have dinner and spend the night at your family’s place. Now you’re telling me there’s a problem. Between us.” I paused. “Kate, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    She let out a sigh and shook her head. “Fine. I’m going to the other side of the country. You’re staying here. How does that work?”
    I shifted on the bench. “I don’t know.”
    â€œI don’t either,” she said. “And that’s the problem.”
    â€œThat’s a problem with location. Not with us.”
    She glanced at a group of junior high school kids ambling by, talking loudly and laughing. She looked back at me.
    â€œWe’re eighteen,” Kate said. “We’re going in different directions.”
    Her words stung me. It didn’t matter to me if they were true. They hurt. And I didn’t like the feeling.
    â€œYour mother write that speech for you?” I asked.
    She rolled her eyes. “You know better.”
    â€œSounds like her,” I said. “All of a sudden, we aren’t compatible because you’re going to live in another state? That sounds exactly like her, Kate.”
    We sat there quietly for a few minutes. Her parents had been a sore spot during the entire year we’d been together. They didn’t approve of their daughter dating someone who wasn’t going to an Ivy League school and whose family was dysfunctional at best. I hadn’t made it any easier by playing the surly, disaffected teen. We had put Kate in a difficult spot. And until that moment on Catalina, she’d always chosen me.
    â€œMaybe it does sound like her,” Kate finally said. “But maybe she’s right, Noah.”
    â€œShe’s right about me, you mean.”
    â€œThat’s not what I meant and you know it,” she said. “But is it realistic to think that we’re gonna stay together over the next four years, three thousand miles apart?”
    I turned and looked at her, her eyes tearing into the heart that she had created.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “But I never thought we wouldn’t try.”
    Her eyes fluttered, maybe surprised by what I said. She bit her bottom lip again. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes.
    â€œNoah,” she started, but choked up and stopped.
    I looked away, my throat tightening.
    She cleared her throat and tried again. “Noah, they