Sloppy Firsts Read Online Free Page B

fingers down our throats. Most of them are totally corny:There once was a girl named Lydia, who had sex and got chlamydia …
     
    Others aim to depress the hell out of you. The best/worst one had a blowup of a girl’s yearbook picture. Her name was Lindsey Greenbush and she was pretty in an unimaginative JC Penney catalog sort of way, like Bridget. Underneath her pic is a list of her activities: National Honor Society, Field Hockey, Soccer, Homecoming Committee, French Club. Then underneath that it says in bold print:Two weeks before her yearbook came out, Lindsey was killed when she got into a car with a drunk driver.
     
    I have to admit that it made me think about what would happen if I got killed by a drunk driver. I can understand why the Weavers won’t fly Hope in for my Bitter Sixteen, but I assume they’d pay for a flight for my funeral. Who else would make sure that my mom buried me in my denim halter dress—especially if I died in winter? I could see my mom arguing that it isn’t warm enough for me to wear something sleeveless, you know, because it’s very important for dead people not to catch cold.
     
    Plus, I’d want Hope to make the show-stopping speech, "The Jessica You Never Knew." She gave a similar speech at Heath’s Mass, so I know she can handle it.
     
    I don’t knowhow she handled it, to tell you the truth. Heath’s death wentso public. The Weavers found themselves smack-dab in the middle of a local media feeding frenzy.Teen’s Death Exposes Town’s Secret Shame screamed the headlines of theOcean County Observer.Youth Overdoses, Shocked Locals Call For Crackdown shouted theAsbury Park Press. In death, Heath became emblematic of the "atypical" heroin user, which sparked a McCarthy-esque paranoia thatYour Child Could Be Next . See, Heath didn’t come from a "bad family." Mrs. Weaver was a nurse. Mr. Weaver was an elementary-school teacher and a eucharistic minister at Saint Bernadette’s, the Catholic church they attended as a family every Sunday. Both parents were active in the PTA and never missed a back-to-school night or ignored a bad report card. How could such a tragedy happen to such good people? Everyone wanted answers. And the only person who had one was dead.
     
    Quite frankly, I think the reason Heath got high was because he was bored out of his mind. He was a really smart guy, and really smart people in Pineville have it rough. There’snothing to do here. His death really made me sad (still does) and not only because it ripped me apart to see Hope cry and wonderWhy? like everyone else. I had always fantasized that when we got older, Heath would see me as more than his little sister’s playmate. Not that I had a crush on him or anything. He seemed like someone who would understand me. I was looking forward to being his equal. His friend.
     
    However, I can’t seem to get out of the anger stage of my grief. I can’t help but feel like Heath ruinedeverything , not just between us, but between Hope and me.
     
    It was kind of ironic that I was thinking about all this when Brandi told me about what Scherzer saw on my book cover and asked me if I’ve thought about suicide.
     
    Deep down, I wanted to tell her that I’ve considered killing myself no more than the average almost-sixteen-year-old honor student with no best friend or boyfriend and bigger bumps on her face than in her bra. But there’s no way that Brandi would understand.
     
    Brandi graduated from PHS about fifteen years ago—a fact unearthed by Sara via an uncle who used to "bang" her. (Sara’s verb choice.) We found the yearbook from that year in the library and saw firsthand that our Professional Counselor had swept the most crucial Class Character categories: Best Dressed, Best Looking, and Most Popular. She was Upper Crust all the way—or whatever they called the U.C. then.
     
    I wasn’t about to confide in her because there’s nothing more annoying than an adult who tells me that I will look back on