Nothing Like You Read Online Free PDF

before she died. I’d lost weight with her, couldn’t sleep like her, felt nauseated when her stomach hurt … I cried
all the time
. And then she was gone and all my sick feelings went with her. Charred up. Burned alongside her in the cremation oven.
     
    I stared at him and he looked back at me and I wondered why he cared so much. I thought about that night at the beach. I pictured his mouth on my mouth and wondered if we would ever kiss like that again. If it would be better than it was before. I pictured his hands up my shirt, then his hands down my pants and wondered what it was, exactly, that he saw in me.
     
    “Is that guy Nils your boyfriend?” he asked. He was tugging on a dead weed.
     
    I said, “No.”
     
    “Do you want him to be?”
     
    “No,” I said again.
     
    Paul looked at me for a long moment. “I think you’re really special, Holly.”
     
    “Do you?” I asked, exhilarated.
     
    He picked up a twig and threw it a few yards off. Then we got up and walked back to the car. Harry ran ahead, kicking up dust along the way. Paul kept behind me as we navigated past tangled roots, loose rocks, and the occasional pile of dog shit.
     
    He never even tried to touch me.
     
    When Harry and I got home it was just before six. Jeff’s car was in the driveway.
     
    “Helloooooo!” I hollered, coming up the steps. I kicked off my shoes and dropped my book bag, my gym bag, and Harry’s leash on the chair by the door. “Anyone home?”
     
    “We’re in here,” came Jeff’s voice, which I followed into the kitchen. There he sat with Nils, two bottles of Pacifico and a deck of cards between them.
     
    “What’s this?” I picked up Nils’s beer and took a sip.
     
    “Gin rummy,” said Nils.
     
    “And underage drinking.”
     
    “He only gets one,” Jeff countered, smoothing his hair with the flat of his palm.
     
    I bounced across the tiled floor toward the fridge. “What’s for dinner?”
     
    “There’s some salmon in there. And there’s leftover squash from last night.”
     
    “Yum,” I said, fishing through the vegetable drawer for a few stray zucchini.
     
    “You’re in a chipper mood,” said Nils. “Where were you, anyway?”
     
    “Hiking. With Harry.” I took out the fish and a cutting board and set the oven to broil.
     
    “Are you crazy? You went hiking? How could you hike in this heat?”
     
    “I like it,” I lied, pulling a wad of drenched, bunched dress-sleeve loose from under my armpit. Holding an ice cube from the freezer to my neck. “Movie night?” I asked, changing the subject.
     
    “Again?”
     
    “Again, yes,” I said, holding a green squash in the air gleefully.
     
    After dinner, we drove to the video store and picked something dumb to watch, a romantic comedy with a wedding
and
an explosion, and that whole night was great and the weekend that followed was great too, not because anything really fantastic happened, just because I finally felt alittle happy and my future seemed somewhat less dismal and there was a person out there somewhere in the world who really thought I was something special.
Maybe things are on the up-and-up,
I thought.
Maybe now I have something good to look forward to.
     
    By Monday I’d worked myself into a near delusional state of bliss. I was back at school, all but skipping and whistling, and there was Paul, down the hall, leaning against his locker. I waved but he didn’t see me because there was this whole huge group of kids blocking his view/my view, so I pushed past them, rehearsing my hello over and over in my head. I’d say, “Hey you,” real casual sounding like it was nothing, just,
hey you …
which seemed so unremarkable but was really, so very intimate.
     
    But as I got closer I saw what I hadn’t seen before. He was attached to something. A girl. A blond, skinny Saskia Van Wyck. He was backing her into his locker. Within seconds my eyes were blurry with tears, which, to be honest, was probably best.