The Safest Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

him about it, he shrugged again, and that was the end of that. At first, I’d thought he was a coward, not standing up to his mom. Then I realized he probably didn’t care. He shrugged. The end.
    I have since come to loathe all boys who shrug.

    Rumor had it that he broke up with his last girlfriend through a text, and that he forgot to break up with the one before that at all before moving on. So, honestly, I guess it could’ve been worse.
    An unfortunate by-product of the Cole breakup was that Emma eventually became ex-best-friend Emma, as well. Sadly, never to be replaced. My neighbor Annika was probably the closest thing I had to one now—when she wasn’t away at boarding school.
    Cole, at least, had let me know in no uncertain terms that whatever we had was over. The shrug. With Emma, it was more of a drifting. There was no big falling-out; she just stopped answering her phone. Our friendship just kind of fizzled, like a sparkler burning down to your fingers. By the time you realize you were being burned, it was too late—the damage done, the spark already extinguished.
    She’d gone on to become someone else—new friends, different crowd—while I remained left behind, painfully the same. A work in progress, Jan called me. Always in progress.
    I assumed Jan had had a Talk with her children about privacy and such, because as far as I knew, neither had told anyone about my mother. And last year, when I found myself wandering the school halls for the first time, their faces were the only ones I recognized—their eyes momentarily meeting my own, then sliding quickly away. Three years later, and it was as if we’d never known each other at all.

    Still, both of them were metaphorical bombs, as far as I was concerned. I couldn’t make eye contact without seeing myself reflected in their eyes—in their mother’s dinnertime conversation, in her papers. I did not like what I saw.
    Cole was the one to speak first. “Mom’s taking a night course. And our dad’s away at work. So here we are.”
    “Thanks,” I said. First word spoken in over three years. Not too hard. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
    But then he shrugged. No big deal. Whatever. We’re done. Take your pick.
    Cole had my medical consent forms, the ones that Jan had used before to get me treated. The ones she needed to get me released. Because I was seventeen, and therefore not capable of making decisions for myself.
    Emma was sixteen, had grown into her wide-set eyes, had also developed curves and a mean streak, if rumors were to be believed. Cole had only gotten taller, had filled out from football and lacrosse, and had his pick of girls, which he rotated through at an alarming pace.
    “What’s Ryan Baker doing here?” Emma asked, like we were still friends—as if she hadn’t systematically ignored me until I stopped trying. And then, when Ryan turned at his name, she leaned into her hip and cocked her head—a study in flirtation—and said, “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah. Just a few stitches,” he said.

    “How much longer?” Cole asked the doctor, not making eye contact with me.
    “Thank you for bringing the papers. But I have a ride,” I said.
    “My mom said—”
    “Ryan’s driving me.” I liked this version of me a lot better. The girl who got rides home from people she vaguely knew, who did not need to rely on the generosity of ex-friends. Resourceful. Resilient.
    “Okay, fine.” Cole let the papers drop into my lap, his hands held up like he was relieving himself of some great responsibility. “I do have better things to do, you know.”
    I wondered what Cole had been doing before his mom sent him here, because his aggravation at me seemed a little stronger than a one-month relationship more than three years earlier should warrant—especially one that ended with a shrug.
    “Blame your mother,” I said, because that hurt.
    “Or yours,” he said, which hurt even more, because he was right.
    The ticking bomb. They knew the