Someone Else Read Online Free PDF

sat down in the plush leather desk chair and flicked on the lamp. Dad’s desk, as usual, was a disaster area. Empty coffee cups, uncorrected papers, and several stacks of Post-it notes were strewn about. The computer was already on, its friendly floating fishies screen saver brightening up the otherwise gloomy room. I jiggled the mouse a little to get rid of the fish and then double-clicked the instant messenger icon. Dad knew I used his computer for email and IMing, but he didn’t quite understand how it all worked. The only time he ever used the computer was to check and send email, and I had to help him with that half the time. So I had no worries about him checking up on my online activities. Not that he would think to do that, even if his computer knowledge did go beyond turning the machine on and off. He trusted me, sometimes too much, according to Mom.
    It wasn’t like I did anything bad on the computer. But there were certain things in my IM history—such as some, uh, rather graphic conversations with Michael—and I would have died if anyone else happened to read them.
    Speaking of Michael, he wasn’t online tonight. No shock there. I wondered where he was and what he was doing. Before my brain could conjure up any distressing images, a cheerful bing told me I had a message. I smiled at the screen. Erin. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a week.
    “Hey you, what are you doing home? Not out partying tonite?”
    I typed in a quick response. “I could ask you the same.”
    “Got me there. So what’s new?”
    “Nothing. You?
    “Not a freaking thing. What’s been going down at OH?”
    OH was our—well, my—high school—Oakfield High. “The usual,” I typed. Then sent a second message right after: “Not the same without you, as you know.”
    She made a frowning smilie, followed by: “I miss you guys so much. My new school is full of snobs and the drama department sucks ass.”
    I told her about Brooke and My Fair Lady , and how Alex had convinced her to take voice lessons to help build her confidence enough to try out for the lead role.
    “She’ll get it,” Erin said. “There are no actresses like Brooke at my shitty school. They’re all so fake…polished. Like pageant queens.”
    “Sounds like you’d fit right in.”
    A raised-eyebrow smilie appeared on the screen. “Yeah, right. I’m a regular Miss Universe around here. They’ll nominate me prom queen, I’m sure.”
    I typed in the code for a grinning smilie. Talking to Erin had cheered me up already.
    “How’s it going with the long-distance thing?” she wrote.
    “Fine,” I tapped out. The cursor hovered indecisively over the send button for a moment, and then I hit the backspace key a few times, erasing the word. Taking a deep breath, I tried again. “Hard. Not sure if I can make it though the year.”
    Another frowny face. “You need to talk?”
    There wasn’t a smilie in existence that could have expressed the gratitude I felt toward her right then. “Yeah,” I answered back. Then the flood gates popped open and I started typing. Erin responded in the exact way that I needed: she read everything, commented little, and let me get it all out. She didn’t tell me to go out and have fun. She didn’t treat me like a mourning widower. She just listened.
    Afterward I felt about fifty pounds lighter, and I told her so.
    “Anytime,” she typed, and then she had to sign off for the night. I could hear Leo, our golden retriever, whimpering in the kitchen, so I decided to shut down too.
    I let Leo out to pee and then headed for my bedroom, counting each creak my footsteps produced as I climbed up the weathered hardwood stairs. Lynn had grown up in this old house, and then inherited it after her parents died. When my father moved in they’d started renovating, adding a huge master bedroom with an en suite and Dad’s study. And they weren’t done yet. In July they’d decided to finish the basement and put in an extra bedroom, another