Spoiled Read Online Free PDF Page A

sat down on the front stoop and looked up at her.
     “Take a breath, Molls.”
    She closed the door and took a seat next to him. The concrete was warm through her cutoffs. “I am breathing. Sort of.”
    “We don’t have to do it,” he said, taking a slurp from his Big Gulp.
    “Do what?”
    “Have this whole weird good-bye talk. I don’t want to have it.”
    His blue eyes met hers and then quickly flicked away.
    “Denial,” she said. “Interesting strategy.”
    “I think it could work,” he said, running a hand through the strawberry blond thicket of hair she knew he’d shave off right
     before the first regional swim meet.
    “Danny…” Molly began. “The last few months… I mean, did I even say thank you?”
    “No need,” Danny insisted. “You’re my best friend. And I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done for me.”
    He slung a long arm over her shoulder. “Look, I know things haven’t always been perfect. But we’re Molly and Danny, you know?
     It’s gonna be okay. We’re always okay,”he said. “Just remember, I love you like Homer Simpson loves beer.”
    “Like a mean kid loves dodgeball.”
    “Like a dog loves a fire hydrant.”
    This was their ritual. It could go on for as long as forty-five minutes, and once made Charmaine threaten to stab them both
     with a fork.
    Danny leaned in and kissed her, his mouth warm and familiar and tasting ever so slightly of Dr Pepper. Behind them, in the
     house, Molly could hear Charmaine screech, followed by a loud crash.
    Danny pulled away. “You’d better go rescue her.”
    “I don’t know how to do this without you.” Molly choked, feeling that familiar pricking sensation behind her eyes. At this
     rate Indiana would put a water conservation ban on her tear ducts.
    Danny stood and pulled her to her feet. He kissed her once more, hard and fast on the mouth.
    “Call me when you get to L.A.,” he said.
    “I will.”
    Danny dropped his arms. With one last look, he crossed her front lawn as quickly as he ever had.
    Molly turned to go back inside and saw a sunflower poking out of the mail slot in the front door. She hadn’t noticed it, didn’t
     even know when he’d done it, but it was perfect and perfectly heartbreaking. She turned around to wave it at him, to clutch
     it to her chest and thank him, but Danny was already gone. Another ghost.

three
    MOLLY SETTLED INTO the soothing buttery leather of seat 3A and instantly understood all the fuss over flying first class: It was like therapy
     without all the intrusive questions.
    Right now, Molly’s particular ailment was nerves. Excessive ones. The chaos theory kind where a butterfly flaps its wings
     in your stomach and it causes your ears to ring and your left toe to swell up enough that your Converse don’t fit. Yesterday,
     she’d been excited; today, without Charmaine to distract her with jokes, the monumental significance of this move was turning
     her brain to mush. She needed soothing wherever she could find it, and being able to recline fully with a container of warm
     nuts—and drink Diet Coke out of a crystal glass—really did help a little.
    “Going on vacation?” asked the aggressively mustachioed man sitting next to her.
    “I’m going to visit my dad,” Molly told him.
    It sounded so profoundly
normal
coming out of her mouth. Natural, even, despite the fact that she’d gone sixteen years without saying anything remotely similar.
     The butterflies gave way briefly to a pleased warmth. She flipped open the magazines she’d purloined from Charmaine’s stash.
People
showed Brick beaming as part of a story about him buying an alpaca farm for a costar who’d expressed a passing yearning to
     make sweaters, and he was in
Us
’s “Stars… They’re Just Like Us!” section as someone who “loves sandwiches,” illustrated by a grainy photo of Brick coming
     out of a Subway restaurant.
    Away from the prying eyes of family and friends—who all seemed fixated on