True Divide Read Online Free PDF Page A

lip gloss that might ruin their young love life, just that is enough.
    Cara pays and skips out the door to a waiting Cole, who opens her truck door and feigns disinterest in her purchases. The goofy smile on his face betrays him, though. If Cara asks him to paint her nails, apply her lip gloss, and spritz his truck with that perfume, he’ll do it.
    Reminiscing over my high school yearbook last night, lingering on the page with Jake Holt’s picture reminded me of what all that feels like. The sensation of wanting someone as much as they want you. The overwhelming feeling that accompanies the first everything .
    But the boy on that yearbook page looked light-years different from the man I saw yesterday, while I remain a carbon copy of my teenage self in so many ways. Then, he was a gangly kid wearing Doc Martens, sporting eyebrow and lip rings, and simmering up with quiet disdain and angst. He was listening to Bright Eyes and Elliott Smith, tossing in a NOFX record when feeling more subversive than usual. I was wearing cheerleading skirts, Ugg boots, and pink velour ensembles that didn’t have “Juicy” emblazoned on the ass, but I wished they did. I was playing a Shania Twain album on repeat.
    Together, we were the personification of every poorly acted teen romantic comedy ever made. Prom queen meets misfit. Good girl meets cynical outcast. For all the things our clothes and music said about who we supposedly were, alone we were so much more. Plus, after a certain point, we were naked with each other a lot, so our disparate taste in clothes didn’t matter much.
    Now, unfortunately, my body is different. My hair, fortunately, is also different. But everything else is the same. I more or less have the same job and live in the same house. Jake went off and got better hair and a suspiciously amazing-looking body, clearly lives someplace other than here, and has a job as a private pilot, for cripe’s sake.
    Most of the night, I was awake, lying in bed and wondering about Jake. Did he jet off already? If he didn’t, where was he staying? Was he in bed thinking about me? Most of all, was he naked or at least shirtless? Because that detail seemed incredibly important to know. A few pictures, undisputable photographic evidence of what lay beneath that starched white dress shirt he was wearing, would be even better.

    By closing time, I’ve busied the rest of the day away doing a new window display and reorganizing the hair products, letting the distraction dim my thoughts about Jake, deciding he must be multiple states away by now. If anything, I know Jake Holt wouldn’t stay in Crowell one second longer than he has to.
    Jake arrived in Crowell halfway through freshman year. When he was ushered into our second-period English class by the school guidance counselor, he was wearing a Flogging Molly ringer tee, some very filthy-looking jeans with a variety of tears, and a dirty black backpack slung over one shoulder with the top of a skateboard sticking out of it. After he was introduced to the class, he proceeded to look right through the entire room as if it were empty, then sat where he was told and said nothing. By lunch, we knew these semifacts about the new kid: he was from Minnesota, his flighty mother—possibly a drug addict, we weren’t sure—had dumped him off to live with his grandmother, and his father (whom Jake had never met) was rumored to be a roadie for a washed-up ’70s acid-rock band.
    By the end of the day, it was decided. Jake Holt was a freak and not be associated with, unless you liked that sort of thing. I, of course, was damn sure I did not.
    Then, all because of a chance late-night drive that ended at a secluded hot spring, Jake and I spent eight months together during our senior year. I wouldn’t even call it dating, because the whole thing was a clandestine matter, hidden away from all the prying eyes of Crowell. Keeping it that way was something