Page 21 of Never Forever
I dug past those, looking for my mom somewhere in my life.
“She read me books at night,” I suddenly remembered. I couldn’t say which books. I’d felt her softness around me and her voice in my ear. She’d let me turn the pages and we’d talk about the illustrations. What we’d thought the author meant with his or her words.
Yes, we’d had that. Once upon a time.
I blinked open my eyes, a little stunned, only to find Carrie smiling at me.
“Maybe that’s why you love reading so much,” she whispered.
She squeezed my hands but didn’t let go. I didn’t let go either.
Thank you, I wanted to say. But I thought that would be weird.
“You guys should just kiss and get it over with,” Annie shouted from behind us.
Carrie
“So is Matt your boyfriend now?”Annie asked me. The spray coming off the bow speckling her glasses.
Matt had walked us to the dock and waved to his dad before he jogged off on his way home.
His dad had waved back to him, like it was no big deal to see him standing there with me and Annie. But I couldn’t help feel Mr. Sullivan looking at me and judging. Like I was trouble. Or bad for Matt. Or something.
Which didn’t make any sense. Matt and I were friends. Good friends. There was no reason his dad shouldn’t like me. He just needed to get to know me better.
“No.” I took Annie’s glasses off her face and wiped the lenses. “We’re friends. That’s all.”
“Baloney,” she said. One of Gran’s old phrases. “You see each other practically every night. You text each other all the time and your face gets all red when you look at him.”
Inside I felt boiling anytime I looked at Matt. Like there was sudden scorching fire in my cheeks and in my chest. I didn’t think that showed on the outside.
I knew Mom would blow a gasket if she knew about Matt and the bandshell. She would say I was too young, and high school relationships were nothing but immature crushes. That boys would distract me from my future.
I knew this because she’d been drilling it into my head for years.
And I could pretend that I didn’t like him, but Annie had been watching me around Matt Sullivan for months. Years.
“Don’t say anything to Mom,” I whispered.
“Carrie,” Annie said, wrapping her arms around me. “I never would.”
“I just…” I felt that wave of heat spread up my chest to my neck and face. And this giddy happy bubble in my chest. “I like him so much.”
“I knew it!” she cried.
“Carrie! Carrie!”
Mom shrieked in the kitchen. Something thumped. I looked up from my phone where I was texting Matt.
Mom walked so fast from the kitchen to the living room she was practically sprinting. Which was shocking because Cecelia Piedmont did not run. Ever.
“Oh for heaven’s sakes, Cecelia, you’ll give the girl a heart attack,” Gran pulled the cucumbers off her eyes. She was lying across the couch with her feet on my lap. It was her afternoon nap. Gran ate one of the cucumbers and winked at me.
Me: Hold on. My mom is freaking out about something.
“What’s up?” I asked, hiding my phone in the velvet cushions of the old couch.
“You got it!” Mom shouted. “You got the part.”