Paperweight Read Online Free Page B

safely outside. The cold air stings my lungs. I can hear voices in the dark, girls giggling outside the villa, but no one is close enough to see. I unearth the phone and power it on.
    Eden answers at the last second. In the background is the obnoxious foamy swell of frat-boy alkies and clinking glasses. I know exactly where she is.
    â€œHeyyyy, girl! Craptown USA misses you! What’s going on?” she screeches. If she’s mad at me, she’s too drunk to remember.
    I play along, because she’s drunk. And playing along when she’s drunk is my specialty.
    â€œThe food sucks.” Not that I would know. I press my back against the exterior of the cottage and let my weight drag me down. “Listen. I can’t talk long. I just—do you think maybe you could go over to my house and talk to my dad? He won’t listen to me, but maybe if somebody else tells him this isn’t a good—”
    â€œJaaaaaason!” Her drunken laughter makes a buzzing sound in my ear.
    â€œIt’s Jaden, baby. Jaden.” A deep, gravelly voice. He breathes into the phone. “Hello? Who’s this?”
    â€œExcellent news,” I inform Jaden. “She’s a horny drunk.”
    I hang up. Only two bars left on the tiny battery icon in the top left corner, and I forgot to stash the charger.

day two
    Saturday, July 5, 9:59 A.M.
    â€œDO you remember your first time?” Shrink asks.
    Just like that. We’re crossing the lawn behind the villa while she looks for the perfect setting for a therapy session. She carries a limp yellow picnic blanket under one arm. I hold the plastic cup of supplement I refuse to drink. Some of the other patients are sprawled out on the grass on their stomachs, writing in their journals. Everything about me is taut: my breath, my shoulders, my gut. I am bound tight with hate—for this place, for Eden, for my father.
    Shrink stops at the edge of the lawn, beneath the stiff yellow talons of a palm tree. Then she spreads the picnic blanket carefully over the grass and settles down.
    â€œMy first time.” I repeat her words. I place the cup of calories in the grass and draw my knees to my chest.
    â€œMy guess is, you never forget the first time you use a behavior.”
    â€œYou always remember.”
    â€œYou mean . . . you always remember.”
    â€œThat’s what I said.” Just as well that she doesn’t get it. This way she won’t be able to talk about how she’s been there, and trust her, recovery has so much more to offer.
    â€œNo . . .” She scrunches up her nose and glances up at a palm tree. She looks young. “I mean, you always remember. As in, you, Stevie, think about the first time a lot. Can’t turn it off.”
    My eyelids drop, and, unbidden, the memory of the first time comes back in smoky shards. The first image is always the same. Me, slumped in the driver’s seat of Dad’s old Buick. Engine idling, headlights off. The stench of sticky sweet gone rancid. My boozy breath, the supplies, the shame.
    â€œStevie?” There it is. Shrink’s soft, dangerous knock. “Can you describe what’s going on for you right now?”
    I will never let her near the actual memory. The weight of it is mine alone to bear. I keep my eyes closed, but I shift the scene.
    â€œShow me what you’re seeing, Stevie.”
    â€œI’m . . . in my bedroom.” The lie sounds so realistic, I’m almost proud. “In the apartment.”
    â€œYour bedroom. Are you alone, or is someone there with you?”
    I know what she’s asking before she knows it. She wants to know if someone, maybe a “Very Bad Man,” touched me. That’s the only possible explanation. Something unspeakable must have happened for me to turn out this way.
    â€œHe’s there,” I say, because nothing else comes. No one ever touched me. No man, anyway. But maybe she’s right; maybe I do need a