Breakable Read Online Free

and let us animals in. The
entrance to the parking lot was lined by imposing, stone walls, left over from
the days it was a private hospital. Rumor said it had been a mental
institution, but I was pretty sure kids only said that to freak each other out.
    We
drove around the lot until we found a spot under a tree halfway down. I pulled
in and turned the rearview mirror to check my make-up. Older Me wasn’t there,
which seemed odd. I couldn’t stop jiggling my leg, and the corners of the
letter poked into my thigh every time I did. It seemed like after everything
that had happened, this wasn’t the time for a confessional. Or maybe it was.
Maybe it was exactly the time to–
    Mark
cursed, low and hard.
    I
looked at him, surprised. “What?”
    “I
forgot. I need to talk to you,” he said. He kept running his palms down his
thighs.
    Twitchy.
    This
was good.
    “Okay.”
I tried not to smile, because something in the way he’d cursed left me
uncertain.
    “Look,
I’m really sorry about this. The thing with Dad just took my head out of the
game and… I wouldn’t normally do this this way. Okay?”
    “It’s
okay,” I told him softly. “Whatever it is…this is me .”
    I
leaned a little closer. Mark grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes and
swallowed hard.
    “Right.
Okay. I need to tell you… do you remember that youth leadership conference
thing I went to a couple weeks ago?”
    “Um…
yeah.” This seemed random.
    “Well,
while I was there, we had to do this assignment thing and we all got paired up.
The only other person from our school was Karyn. So her and I worked together.”
    I
froze. The ball of hope in my chest shivered.
    That
was when I saw what I’d noticed in him through a new filter. The nervous
energy. The inability to meet my eyes. The twitchy.
    And,
because it was the story of my life, I didn’t really need him to say anymore.
Though of course, he did. But the loud pulsing in my ears meant I only caught
snatches of it.
    “…one
of those things. We were working late at night by ourselves. You know how it
is…”
    “…hadn’t
really thought about her that way before. I knew how mad you were at her…”
    “…we
really got to know each other. Like really. She’s different to what I
expected…”
    “…wanted
to pretend I didn’t feel that way too. But…”
    I
sat back in my seat and the corner of the letter pricked my thigh again. I
wanted to scream at it. I turned away from Mark, towards the windshield, seeing
but not seeing the groups of people walking along the sidewalk, laughing and
talking, completely unaware that my heart was turning hard and brittle,
threatening to snap clean in two.
    “Stace…
Stace, are you listening?” Mark squeezed my hand.
    I
wanted to yank it out of his grip. “Of course.” My voice sounded dead, even to
me.
    “I
told her you were my best friend. That I’d never date someone who made your
life hell. Okay? She said she didn’t have a problem with you. She said she felt
terrible about how things had been between you. That it started because she
thought you didn’t like her .”
    He
smiled a little and shook his head, apparently warmed by the memory. I wanted
to smack the grin off his face. Stupid, gullible, idiot.
    He
squeezed my hand again. “Nothing’s going to change, okay?” he said quietly.
    I
nodded because I had to. “Yeah, sure. It’s fine.” Like hell. I took my
hand back, resisting the urge to wipe it on my jeans. “I wish you would have
told me sooner, that’s all. I just…” Are you serious? “I mean, you can
date whoever you want, of course. But… Karyn? I mean… why her?”
    Why
the sniping, spiteful, two-faced cow who everyone else thought was a
princess? Why the one who whispered in her friend’s ears and set them on me
like well-trained dogs, then stood back and laughed? Couldn’t he see the glare
from that perfect-girl façade she painted on every morning?
    Because
he was a guy, I expected him to wax lyrical about