Fixing Delilah Read Online Free Page A

NASTY sign until her eyes go blank, her hands curled in her lap like dried leaves.
    “Every day you wake up and think, we’ll fix things tomorrow,” she says, still staring at the sign. “Or the next day. Or maybe the next. But now… there won’t be a next day. Mom’s… she’s just… gone . Like that .” She snaps her fingers.
    “I’m sorry. I thought—”
    “I have this memory of shopping here for school supplies,” she says, turning the silver bangles around her wrist. “Your mom and I always swapped bags on the way out to the car to see who got more loot.”
    I try to picture Mom and Rachel as kids, digging through bags of pencil cases and folders and erasers and Elmer’s glue, but there’s someone missing from the story. We don’t talk about her often, my other aunt. I’ve never even called her Aunt Stephanie. Dead at nineteen from cardiac arrest, she didn’t live long enough to come into the title. And though Mom gave me her youngest sister’s middle name as my first, by the time I was old enough to ask questions, she’d buried the entire history of it with I’m sorry, Del… I really don’t want to talk about it.
    I want to ask Rachel about Stephanie now, but I don’t get much further than the S .
    “Sss… hard to imagine Mom as a little girl,” I say instead.
    “Claire lived for back-to-school time. She was very methodical about it. She’d spread everything out on the bed and organize it into categories. Then she had this whole special way to load up her backpack.”
    “You should’ve seen her this morning,” I say. “Notice all the boxes and matching luggage?”
    “Yep.”
    “She brought pantsuits, Rachel.”
    “Pantsuits? Are you serious?”
    “I wouldn’t kid about something like pantsuits.”
    Rachel shakes her head. “It’s a wonder you’ve survived this long, Del.”
    “Just barely,” I say, remembering Mom’s face when she picked me up at Blush yesterday. “Things at home aren’t exactly splendid.”
    Rachel shifts in her seat to face me. “Okay, I’m totally ambushing you here. What’s going on with you? Your mom told me last night you’ve been getting into some trouble.”
    I laugh, shaking my head. “You and Mom talk like once a year. Now she decides to be chatty?”
    “She’s worried about you, Delilah.”
    I put my sunglasses on top of my head and look out the passenger window at two men in cutoff flannel shirts having a spitting contest on the curb.
    “She worries about all the wrong things,” I say, more to the guys outside than to Rachel. “I’m fine.”
    “Right. I was on the phone with her last night when she discovered you’d snuck out, presumably with some dude.”
    “Finn,” I say, “is not some dude.”
    “Boyfriend?”
    “Not exactly. We just kind of… it’s nothing, really.”
    “I get it.” Rachel’s hand turns my face away from the window. “Boyfriend. Dude. Nothing really. Please tell me that you’re at least being… safe ?”
    I think about waiting in the black space of the street corner for Finn, who’s always late, and the way he drops me off for the walk back to my house alone. I recall the spin of the tires on the pavement last night as he swerved to stay on the road after sliding his hand up my shirt before we got to the woods. I feel the bark of the tree outside my bedroom window scraping my fingers as I pulled myself back up to the second floor. Safe ?
    “God, Rachel. Yes, we’re safe. I’m not stupid, despite what my mother thinks.”
    “She knows you’re not stupid, Del. Which is why she says your behavior lately doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Great. Now you sound like her .” I put my sunglasses back on and turn away again. The spit champs are gone. “I thought you were on my side.”
    “There aren’t any sides,” she says. “I just want you to be okay. I’m worried about you, too.”
    “Then be straight with me. What happened back then? I was young, but I remember you guys arguing with Nana,