Now She's Gone: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

could feel it. It’s like something shifted between us, like a bond had been broken. I still feel it when I think of this.
    ‘Come on, Cassandra!’ she hissed.
    ‘No!’ I screamed as she reached over and grabbed me and this time she pulled me away from him. I screamed and sobbed all the way to the car as he stood there and looked at his shoes. I think he wiped at his eyes. He knew then he’d never be part of my life. She would never let him.
    Later she told me, ‘Tomorrow you’ll feel better and forget about him, just like I did. It’s for your own good, baby. That man doesn’t know how to love anybody but himself.’
    That was the last time I saw him alive. I hope she’s happy.”
     
    I stared at the notebook. She’d never told me that. She only laughingly referred to her father as a sperm donor. I remembered when he died. She’d gotten a phone call from her friend Kelsey. I came home to see her on the floor, curled in a little ball, sobbing. She’d cried for what seemed like hours.
    She still had that twenty dollar bill. She carried it around with her wherever she went. Once I asked her about it and all she said, “It’s just special to me. The first money I ever earned.” She didn’t tell me it was the only thing she’d ever gotten from her father and she couldn’t part with it because somehow that twenty dollar bill tied them together.
     
     
    Wayne
    “Dear Diary,
    God, I just hate the way that sounds. It’s one of those words like ‘period.’ It just comes out of your mouth bad. I think I will switch it to ‘Hello, you’ or something. That sounds better.
    Anyway. School dance. A song I really liked but can’t remember the name of was playing in the background and Kelsey and I were sitting on the bleachers bored out of our skulls. I don’t why I remember this, but we were discussing The Karate Kid.
    It was funny. We both had on these ultra-tight designer jeans and these little button-up tops with fluffy sleeves. We were stylin ’! I will never forget those jeans. I had to save my baby sitting money for eons to buy them but they were worth every dime. All the boys checked out my ass in those jeans.
    We were both sixteen, almost seventeen, and thought we were the shit. Some of the boys did too, but, of course, none the boys we wanted to think we were the shit thought we were the shit. You know, the ‘popular’ boys with the letter jackets and the slicked back hair. The jocks wouldn’t give us a second look because we weren’t cheerleaders or some such shit.
    The other boys thought we were pretty cool. Or so I like to imagine.
    The other boys… Ah, yes. (I can feel a good memory coming on.) The other boys liked us. It was the other boys who worked on their parents’ dairy farms before and after school and drove these huge four-wheel drive pick-ups that were always mud-splattered. The ones who wore cowboy boots to dances and never tried out for any of the sports teams. The boys in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) who dressed for events in their little blue jackets with the yellow patches all over them.
    Ah, the boys who had those awesome rippling shoulder muscles and that sun-bleached hair. The boys whose skin was so tight and tanned it made them look like Greek gods.
    Wayne was one of those boys.
    I didn’t even know he had a crush on me until the dance. All I know is Kelsey excused herself to the bathroom and suddenly he was sitting next to me, trying not to look at me. I ignored him and popped my gum.
    Then he said, ‘Uh, Sandy, do you want to…uh, dance?’
    ‘Nah.’
    He looked crushed. Not that I gave a shit. I was not looking to hook up with Wayne Eberhart . He was from this big German looking family. A big, big guy. I sometimes think that’s why I fell for Bruce so hard because he’s big, like Wayne was.”
     
    I stopped reading and considered that. I decided to take it as a compliment.
     
    “So, he’s sitting there like a bump on a log and I know he’s not going to