Split Ends Read Online Free

not going to church, and I don’t need anyone checking on me or bringing me cookies to make me fat, you got it? Those women think they know my story, but they don’t know anything and neither do you, so don’t go thinking things will be so different in California. Life wears you down, Sarah Claire. You try to fight it, but it wears you down, and those women did their part.”
    â€œMom, they’re not like that. The women who are like that don’t talk to me. I’m not worthy, you know?”
    â€œThey always thumbed their noses at us. You think you can make it different, but you can’t make it any different, Sarah Claire. Their minds were made up a long time ago, whether they converted you or not.”
    I know better than to argue. “Don’t forget to show up for your hearing, Mom. I put a thousand dollars down saying you’d be there.”
    â€œA thousand dollars. What does that judge think I did that’s worth ten thousand dollars’ bail?”
    â€œDrunk driving is serious these days.” She’s looking the other way, so I roll my eyes and mouth a big Duh , if for nothing else than my own sanity. “It’s not like twenty years ago when no one was on these roads. You could have killed someone besides yourself.”
    â€œDon’t lecture me! I wasn’t drunk. I don’t care what his little walk-on-the-white-line test told him. I’m old. You try walking straight when you get to be my age.”
    â€œYou’re forty-three, Mom. That’s not old.”
    â€œIt’s too old to walk straight on a white line at midnight, I’ll tell you that.” She holds up one of my shirts to indicate that it, too, needs to be ironed. “I’ll get your precious money back. I only had to borrow because the mortgage was due. I assumed you wanted a roof over your head.”
    My mother is refolding everything I put into the suitcase from the laundry basket, and suddenly I’m just not in the mood. “You know, I need a nap; I think I’ll pack later.
    In my room I plop onto my bed, gazing up at my ceiling and my poster of Cary Grant as he stares off into the distance, his cleft chin resting on his gentle hands.
    â€œEveryone wants to be Cary Grant,” he famously said. “Even I want to be Cary Grant.”
    â€œI do too, Cary. I want to be Audrey Hepburn and Deborah Kerr and everything old Hollywood has to offer. I want to live the dream.” I smile, thinking tomorrow I’m really going to be doing it.
    Back when I put that poster up, I was too young to realize it (and too old even then for posters on my ceiling), but subconsciously I saw something in that photo gave me hope. I always believed God had more for me than this aged yet immaculate house, and for some reason, that poster—those sultry, deep, brown eyes—kept the dream alive. Long enough for me to save up the money to get out.
    God didn’t give me an overly active imagination and a friend in the library—with extensive access to VHS movies from times gone by—for nothing. It was my escape. I saw myself as part of something bigger. Even in school when the wealthy ranchers’ kids called me white trash, I waited with anticipation for my life to change, for the right moment to embrace my fantabulous destiny. I imagined a hero (who may or may not have looked like Cary) who would love me intensely. He would travel across the Tetons to pluck me from my average existence and take me to my destiny and a life of romance and adventure. Just like Cary did in North by Northwest .
    I wanted chivalry, pure and simple. And to be a part of Hollywood’s history—and its future.
    My active imagination is probably brought on by some form of psychosis, but it’s there nonetheless. I read once that sometimes psychosis is healthy because it allows you to escape a poor reality. So I’m just waiting for the time continuum to shift, and I am on