Possessing Jessie Read Online Free PDF

to blame.”
    â€œYes, I am. I shouldn’t have got mad at him. I should have stayed with him.”
    â€œAnd get yourself killed, too?”
    â€œI should have tried to, you know, like, beg and cry, and tell him I was scared instead of yelling at him and ditching.”
    â€œI think you had every right to ditch. Did you tell your mother how stupid he was acting?”
    â€œNo. I mean, I wanted to, I tried to, but she just–looks–straight through me.” Jessie started to choke up.
    Alisha sat back in her chair, giving Jessie a couple of minutes to get it together, but also thinking hard.
    â€œSo if your mother doesn’t want to listen,” Alisha said when she thought it was safe, “and she doesn’t know what happened, why would she blame you?”
    Jessie just shook her head. “I was older. In charge. I wasn’t with him when he hit the oak tree. It’s my fault.”
    Alisha felt that Jason’s titanic ego had sunk him and there wasn’t a thing Jessie could have done about it, but she couldn’t say that. Even thinking it made her feel a little bit spooked, because somewhere, probably from her grandmother, she’d heard it was bad luck to think ill of the dead.
    All she said was, “Am I understanding you right? These days your mother won’t talk to you at all unless you dress up like Jason?”
    â€œRight.”
    Alisha leaned forward to touch her friend’s hand. “Jessie, that is so wrong. I’m sorry; you know I like your mother, but this time she’s wrong .”
    â€œShe’s grieving,” Jessie said, a little angry, a little defensive.
    â€œSure, but there are limits. Listen, I have an idea. Please think about this, Jessie–it might really be the answer. You could go live with your father for a while.”
    â€œWhat?” Jessie jolted upright as if Alisha had stuck a needle into her. “My father ?”
    â€œYeah.” It took Alisha some effort to say this, because she knew how Jessie blamed her father for the divorce. She said he never phoned her and she refused to phone him, which was weird, considering that, before her father left, she had been so all about him. Back then her father was wonderful to her and took her side when she got into fights with her mother. Alisha remembered Mr. Ressler as a handsome, all-American kind of guy, nice and mellow even when he drank too much. He liked to hang around bars, and he certainly was the kind who was attracted to women and women to him. Which maybe explained why Mrs. Ressler had transferred all her attention and her adoration to Jason.
    And now Jason was gone, Alisha reminded herself, feeling a little shaken because, for a moment, she had forgotten he was dead.
    Jessie was saying, “My father didn’t even bother to come to Jason’s f-f-funeral.…”
    Before Jessie could start crying, Alisha grabbed her by the arm and said, “What if he didn’t know? What if nobody told him?”
    â€œBut–I–how …” Sitting with her mouth open, Jessie looked more like herself and less like Jason than Alisha had seen her all day.
    Alisha challenged, “Listen, Jessie, your mother is not acting rational. Even at the funeral she was still saying it was all a mistake, like, the casket was empty, and Jason would be coming back. Do you really think she phoned your father to tell him Jason was dead?”
    â€œDon’t go there, okay?” Jessie scowled. “There’s no reason she should phone Dad about anything. And I won’t phone him, either. He wouldn’t help me if he could.”
    â€œWhat makes you think that?”
    â€œDad is–just–he would blame me, too.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I should have stayed with Jason.”
    â€œJessie, that makes no sense! Listen, call your father. Please?”
    â€œNo. Why should I call him when he never calls me? I need to stay