Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_03 Read Online Free PDF

prepping them for a trip to Goodwill. She could just about hear Petula walking by her open bedroom door and cracking yet again: “Is that your closet or a time machine?”

For a change, Scarlet felt, Petula might have a point.

“Sometimes vintage,” Scarlet thought to herself, “is just old.”

This was a realization that Scarlet had come by hard. She’d once crafted her outfits strictly for her own pleasure. The way she chose to dress had been a real act of pride, maybe even defiance. Not so much now, when everything she wore would turn up in knockoff versions on underclassmen a few days later, but not that long ago. She could remember being stared at, or worse, laughed at for her “look.” Oddly, she missed that part of it. Much like having a personal assistant to prescreen potential friends, it had helped her to weed out the people she would never want to associate with. Besides, she felt that girls in velour tracksuits with chain store logos splashed across their asses had no right to say she looked bad.

What those girls, especially the ones who could afford to dress well, would never understand is that there is a big difference between having a sense of fashion and a sense of style. One comes from magazines, from what you’re told; the other from your own imagination, what you feel, she thought as she added to the mound below her.

Revisiting all her old issues and foraging through her old clothes were becoming more and more commonplace for Scarlet these days. She wasn’t sure if it was an early spring-cleaning bug she’d come down with, her pathological fear of boredom, or something much deeper. With school nearly over and Damen away at college, she had much too much time to think. And one of the things she had been thinking about quite a bit was Damen. She would have much preferred to be cleaning up for his visit, but he had exams and couldn’t make it home for Valentine’s Day.

Scarlet understood that school was a priority for him, but she was still a little upset about being alone. Not that she would ever show him. She wouldn’t have minded going to see a midnight viewing of a V-Day slasher flick in 3-D, which happened to be their tradition. She felt just the slightest bit taken for granted. Would Petula, she thought, have ever stood for such treatment, or more the question, would he have even considered treating Petula this way in the first place?

She returned to the business at hand. Tossing all these things was like a little death for her. You might even call it murder, judging from the condition of her closets and the castoffs on the floor. But what was she trying to kill off, she wondered? Her past or her future?

As she stared down at the mounds of her once must-have apparel, she realized that in giving her stuff away, she was giving up her history, too—a history she’d shared, mentally, emotionally, and physically with Charlotte. Scarlet missed her terribly. Theirs was the most intimate relationship she’d ever had—at least so far. But even though she may have given herself over to Charlotte, she’d never given herself up, she thought, until now.

    Chapter 4 Heart-Shaped Box

And I’m not gonna live my life

On one side of an ampersand

And even if I went with you

I’m not the girl you think I am

—Amanda Palmer

    I against I.

We are often so distracted by the internal war between what we want to do and what we have to do that we overlook what we need to do. Not need in the sense of an obligation to others, but in the sense of a compulsion to preserve our own sanity. When doing what others think we should do comes into direct conflict with what our heads or hearts demand, it’s time to choose whether our top priority is to please others or to please ourselves.

Petula strained to see through the fogged-up windows of her brand-new BMW and down the darkened side street toward the glow emanating from the alley. As best she could determine, it was a garbage can spewing fire and