Regret List Read Online Free PDF Page B

precursor to cookie dough in my mind. Why
would anyone abandon that?
    He nodded, his fists clenched in rage.
    “Do you, like, know this for sure? How’d you find
out?” I was still in shock, certain that Asher had misunderstood
somehow. It wasn’t like him to jump to conclusions, but his family
acted so happy all the time, whenever I saw them all together.
Well, everyone except Asher, who seemed to spend half his life in a
bad mood.
    “My mom made him tell us,” he mumbled, making it
harder for me to understand him. “He hooked up with some girl at
the Portland branch during a business trip and now he’s going to
transfer there, to get away from us.”
    I blinked. “So, are they getting a divorce then?”
    He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He could die for all I
care.” I stiffened and his eyes widened a little. Sorry , he
signed, a circle on his chest. That’s how I knew he really meant
it, wasn’t just saying sorry because it was the proper social
convention. Signs were what brought us together and the language we
never lied in.
    I flicked the wood louse from my arm and turned away.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said, sliding off the log and
feeling the bark scrape my bare legs.
    I heard him slide off next to me and we stood
silently for a moment, watching the lightning still flickering in
the distance. “Why don’t you talk about him?” he asked.
    “There’s nothing to say,” I replied truthfully. What
could I say about a man I didn’t even remember? I had never
explained to Asher exactly what had happened – that he had killed
some lady and then run from all his problems in the only way he
knew how. All he knew was that my dad had a pill problem and ended
up committing suicide over them.
    “Do you miss him?”
    I thought about it for a moment. “I miss the idea of
a dad,” I explained finally. “I don’t know if I can miss a man who
couldn’t even bother to get help for the sake of his family.”
    Angry , he signed and I giggled a little. Even
if I didn’t remember the exact sign, I could understand it from his
expression.
    “Yeah. Angry. Is that bad?”
    He shrugged. “It’s okay. We can be angry together.”
And so we were. His was a hot rage that boiled over unexpectedly
and mine was a dark, throbbing anger that refused to forgive. But
we understood each other and it was one more tie that bound us
together. His dad really did move out, ended up getting cheated on
by the Portland floozy, and lost his job when she accused him of
sexual harassment after he wouldn’t stop pestering her to get back
together with him. He eventually got his own apartment and invited
Asher and his brothers over a few times, but none of them ended up
visiting. Betrayal is an ugly thing to get over.
    Back then, I thought I would never do anything to
make Asher that angry at me, make him feel that betrayed. I wish I
had been right.
    But, we’re still at the beginning of ninth grade,
before everything fell apart. That evening after the first day of
high school, I got a text from Asher on my phone. Come up to the
butte , he wrote and so I grabbed the notebook and headed out,
leaving a note for my mom on the counter. She had been going out a
lot back then – dates, I assumed, although she never said so. We
didn’t have a bad relationship exactly, just an absent-minded one.
She was gone most of the time and I didn’t ask her about her
absence. In return, she ignored most of my life.
    It was only mid-September, but the temperature was
already dropping outside and by the time I got to the top of the
butte, I was sorry I hadn’t brought a jacket. Asher was already up
there, lying on top of one of the boulders, soaking up the last
rays of sunlight. I clambered up next to him, pulling open the
notebook as I went. “I like the wizard’s bodyguard,” I said, lying
down next to him and pointing at the girl lurking in the shadows
that he had drawn, “but she shouldn’t start out as good.”
    He looked thoughtful