Signs of You Read Online Free

broke.
    â€œWe have a lot in common,” he adds.
    Like you both need oxygen to breathe?
    â€œWhoa, what’s that face about?” he asks. “Careful, wouldn’t want it to get stuck like that.” He says it gingerly, like a question: Is it okay to joke now?
    I force an it’s-all-good smile as we pull up in front of his house. “Thanks for coming with. I just . . . needed to go.”
    He looks at me for a second, sizing me up, trying to tell if it’s really okay to let me drive home.
    â€œI’m f ine,” I say. “Just need to go to bed. Get my rest. I have a history test and a physics test to fail tomorrow.”
    That convinces him, and he opens his car door.
    â€œNight,” he says, his brown eyes catching a sparkle from the streetlight above. He reaches up for the f ist-bump handshake.
    â€œNight,” I say, our hands gently touching. Ask him. Now. “Hey, Jay?” I say it before he has a chance to shut the passenger-side door. “Weird question for you.”
    â€œOkay. Shoot.”
    â€œYou know the cross necklace your dad found?”
    He nods.
    â€œWell.” I pause, realizing how deranged I’m about to sound. “You ever, like, wear it?”
    â€œYou’re right, that’s totally weird. You know that my dad always handled it. Threatened to kill us if we even touched it. It’s like a million years old. Why?”
    â€œDid he ever wear it?”
    â€œI have no idea. I mean, he always kept it locked up. But, seriously, why are you asking?”
    Now he’s looking at me like I’m a total freak, and I know I need to come up with some sort of reason why I just randomly brought it up.
    â€œI saw one of those antique shows on the History Channel,” I lie, though I’m not sure why. I could’ve worked the cross into a real explanation somehow. I could’ve asked if Jay ever missed his dad all of a sudden, at weird times, like I missed my mom tonight. If the feeling was ever so strong that it made him do strange things, like try on that cross. After all, the necklace helped kill his father. Jay has said as much: People became a lot more forgiving of his drinking after the discovery. But Sarah Larsen threw me for a loop. “You know, the ones where people pawn all their parents’ heirlooms for cash? Made me think of the necklace, that’s all.”
    After a moment, he shrugs. “Yeah, well, it would be the douche move of the century to pawn it. I keep telling my mom it should go to a museum.” His face softens, but he still doesn’t look convinced that he shouldn’t be worried. “You sure you’re okay?”
    I nod, and he looks directly into my eyes, studying me.
    â€œOkay, then,” he says. “Goodnight.”
    â€œNight.”
    He takes a few steps toward his house but then stops and slips his cell out of his back pocket. He’s texting Sarah back. He can’t even wait until he gets inside?
    In my mind, I run through the sad emoji list on my phone. I think of the crying ones and the variety of tear placements on their faces. A sad face with a single tear on the right. Or on the left. Above the eyes or below? A face with a stream of tears on both sides. I move on to the handful with varying degrees of frowns and no tears at all. But even with the vast array of sad choices, none really f it.
    I imagine what the I’m-having-hallucinations-about-my-mom emoji would look like. Its face would be confused, a lost look in the eyes. A tiny bottle of meds would be open next to it, a stray pill rolling away. I imagine what the I-am-completely-and-utterly-depressed-because-I’m-into-my-best-friend emoji would look like. It would be unsteady on its feet, on the verge of vomiting, holding a sign that says love sucks .
    And that’s exactly what I text Jay. Maybe because I’m losing it, maybe because I saw my mom, maybe because I feel like the whole world is