The Vow Read Online Free PDF Page B

that holding it all day was absolutely not going to happen, I had a wet spot blooming over the front of my khakis and hot piss running down my legs and into my socks.
    It was the albino boa constrictor that saved me. All the kids were standing around a science center employee, mesmerized by the grotesque yellowish snake draped around his shoulders, and by some act of God, or maybe just an act of exclusion, I was behind them.
    At first the physical relief was too sweet to feel anything else. But then pleasure was swallowed whole by panic. I couldn’t move. I should’ve been running to find the bathroom, or hiding somewhere, or at the very least, looking for one of the parent volunteers, but my urine-soaked legs were frozen.
    Standing helplessly, waiting for people to notice what I’d done, I realized that my isolation was about to turn into something much, much uglier. I had been a pariah. Now I’d be prey. I’d have a better chance of survival with that snake than with my classmates after this.
    That’s when I saw Annie. Birdlike. Pale. Silent. Her sunken eyeballs were like marbles, staring unblinking from the far side of the cluster of students. I didn’t notice then that she was just as separate from them as I was. I only saw that she was inches taller than the crowd and practically incandescent. Later, I learned how phobic she was of snakes, how she’d been close to throwing up, trying not to stare at its glistening body or hear the shlip, shlip of its flicking tongue. But in that moment, her paleness made her look like a ghost, or maybe an angel.
    An angel who was staring at my crotch.
    I shuddered, feeling the paralysis breaking and a rush of tears flooding my eyes. But before I could even start crying, she was in front of me, pushing me hard, driving me backward, whispering, Go-go-go-go-go!
    I turned, stumbled along with no choice—she was skinny but surprisingly strong—and even if I did have a choice, I didn’t have any ideas of my own. Bewildered, I let her shove me all the way to the women’s bathroom and into a stall.
    “Stay here!” she hissed, her pink lips quivering, sky-blue eyes wide and fierce. Then she was gone.
    I slid the metal lock shut with a quivering index finger and waited. Forever. I stood shivering in the overly air-conditioned ladies’ room, afraid to sit on the toilet, afraid to move, afraid that Annie had left me there to die, afraid she was about to throw open the door and bring my classmates through one by one to laugh at the pants-pissing freak show.
    Someone came in and I tensed every muscle, bracing for whatever was about to be done to me. Orthopedic shoes and enormous ankles appeared in the stall next to mine. Not her. I listened to the stranger pee and sigh, flush, use the sink, and leave.
    Maybe Annie wasn’t coming back. Maybe she’d found her friends and forgotten about me. She had lots of them. Everyone liked Annie Bernier, or at least they were nice to her, which from what I could tell, was the same thing. She never smiled, but she wasn’t like the pouting popular girls. Not viciously pretty or loud-talking or hair-twirling—and yet everyone treated her like royalty.
    I didn’t know then about Lena. I didn’t know that they weren’t her friends any more than they were my friends, that we were both being ostracized, just in different ways.
    The door swung opened again, and Annie’s pale-pink Chucks appeared on the mottled tile just beyond my stall.
    I held my breath.
    “Put these on,” she whispered, even though we were alone.
    A pair of black sweatpants appeared on the floor, and she slid them under with her foot. I snatched them greedily. I didn’t even ask or care where she’d found them. They were too big, but not so big they’d fall down unless someone gave them a yank.
    I opened the door. Annie stood in front of me, spindly arms crossed, examining the fit.
    No place to look. I stared at the wall, cheeks burning as the mortification returned, mixed with