Losing Me, Finding You Read Online Free PDF Page B

Hopefully, they'll understand when I don't show up for our dates tonight.

My mother doesn't speak to me on the way home, but that's alright because I'm wrapped up in fantasies that combine Austin Sparks with a variety of my other favorite book boyfriends, making for a daydream that's almost too risqué for the hot heat of the afternoon. It's only when we pull into the driveway and I see my father's car that I start to get nervous.
    “Mama.”
    “Go up to your room,” she tells me, as if I'm five years old and unruly. I purse my lips, a habit I picked up from watching her.
    “Why?” I demand, tearing off my seat belt and turning to look at her. I can practically feel the brochure burning a hole in my purse. Honestly, I'd love to go up to my room and look at it, choose something to wear, finish my book, but I don't like being told to do so. I never have. What I've lacked is passion and conviction and although I can't lay claim to either yet, something about today has made me want an explanation, at the very least.
    My mother shakes her head but doesn't answer, keeping her eyes locked onto the beige paint of the garage door.
    “Mom.” I reach out my hand to touch her arm, but she slaps it away with such force that pain ricochets up my bones and into my shoulder, making me pull back and slam into the car door. Her eyes are lit from behind with the fire of misinformation and ignorance. I don't know what it is that she thinks I've done, but it's much, much worse than Austin's lie about me trying to buy a bike.
    “Did I raise you to be a whore?” she asks, and I gasp.
    “What?” I whisper as my mother takes off her own seat belt with slow, careful movements, like she's trying to hold back another surge of violence. She pulls the rearview mirror towards her and checks her brown eyeshadow, her nude lipstick, and her pink cheeks. She couldn't possibly show my father anything other than perfection. “I don't understand,” I say as she opens her door and steps out onto the pale pavement of the driveway.
    “I don't know who that man is or where he's from, but I do know that if you plan to see him again, the wrath of the Lord is going to fall onto your shoulders.” She pauses, one hand still on the handle of her door, the other reaching up to pat her hair. “Go up to your room and pray to Jesus for forgiveness.” My mother slams the door and disappears into the house, leaving me flabbergasted and wide-eyed. I sit there for awhile, unmoving, while the cool air inside the car starts to heat up and makes me sweat. Somehow, she's gotten it into her mind that I … know Austin Sparks. How? Why would she think that? I've never even gone on a date.
    I open my door and am ready to chase after her for questioning when my friend, Christy, taps on the roof with her knuckles and makes me jump. My purse falls to the driveway and opens up, sending poor Adam tumbling down the cement in a flutter of pages. Christy picks up the book, thumbs through it and hands it back to me.
    “Where have you been?” she asks, glancing up at the second story of her house where her mother's peeking through the curtains at us. It's almost enough to make me pick up a rock and throw it at the glass. “I've been calling you all day.”
    “Out with my mother ,” I say and Christy blinks at me questioningly when the word slides from my lips like a hiss. Her blue eyes look extra pretty today, rimmed in a thin line of black kohl and topped with a dash of blue shadow. I realize suddenly that it's been three years since I've seen her in so much makeup – not since senior prom. “Why? What's going on?” Christy looks up at the window again; her mother is gone. I bend down and pick up my purse, tucking it under my arm as I shut the hot metal of the door with my bum – with my ass.
    “I'm going to the festival today,” she declares proudly. Ah. Her mother's glare makes a whole lot of sense now. Christy's parents may as well be clones of mine. While her