The Big Rewind Read Online Free Page B

“Give me a call.”
    It was hugs and call-mes all around, and then Natalie left, dragging her drunken date out with her. Mac wandered off into the kitchen to intrude on a conversation about Faith No More, leaving Sid and me sitting awkwardly next to the now-empty bookcase. I had a torn dress, some DVDs, an ice cube tray, and her cat. I didn’t really need anything else.

Chapter 5
BOYS ON THE RADIO
    S aturday night found me halfheartedly watching a rerun of 30 Rock when I heard a knock on the door. It was Hillary, holding a big pink Betsey Johnson box and a binder. “Here,” she said, passing them to me. “I don’t know what to do with these—they’re her old mix tapes. Doesn’t seem right to just throw them out, but no one took them.”
    I muttered a thanks and tried not to show my hesitation. She might as well have given me a bag of KitKat’s mismatched socks or her high school yearbooks. I didn’t have a tape player, and even if I did, the tapes would have meant nothing more to me than a brief nostalgic trip with Ace of Base or something new to download. Hillary would have been more likely to know the people who’d made the tapes and might have even made a few herself. It didn’t seem right that they should be handed over to a stranger.
    â€œYou want to come in for a drink?” I asked, not knowing what else to say and hoping I had an extra bottle of wine in case she agreed.
    â€œNah,” she replied. “I’m catching the late train back to Boston. I kinda can’t stand it here.” Baldrick hopped off the couch and rubbed against her legs. She crouched down and scratched his face. “Take good care of him,” she said. “He was KitKat’s baby. She found him behind our house when he was just a kitten andtook him with her everywhere for the first month she had him. She wouldn’t go anyplace he couldn’t go too—he used to sit on her lap at the movies. One time she accidentally ate one of his cat treats in the dark, thinking it was a Raisinette.”
    KitKat had never told me that story. There were a lot of stories that she never got to tell me. I’d always liked her but never made enough of an effort to go downstairs and ask her out for coffee, dinner, a movie night. I told myself it was because we were both busy, but the truth was, even with only two years’ age difference between us, she was the cool senior to my awkward freshman. I hadn’t wanted her to think I was some needy dork trying to hang with the queen bee, so I’d avoided any situation where I might look desperate.
    Add that to the pile of regrets.
    Hillary stood up and gave me a grim little smile. “KitKat really liked you,” she said. “She may have been way too into this whole stupid scene, but she thought you were genuinely cool. Not like the rest of those pretentious fucks.” She put a cigarette in her mouth, but didn’t light it.
    I opened the door a little wider. “You can smoke out the living room window,” I offered. “One for the road, right?”
    She came in and sat on the low bookcase, opened the window, and flicked open a silver Zippo. Baldrick jumped into her lap and she petted him with her free hand. There was a momentary flicker of happiness across her face. “A cat and a cigarette,” she said. “What more could any girl want?”
    â€œMaybe a cupcake?”
    â€œWhy, you got one?”
    I didn’t.
    â€œFigures,” she said. “And some Brony covered in shitty tattoos took her recipe book. He’s in for a surprise. You know what her secret was?”
    Once again, I didn’t know the answer. I shook my head and she continued. “Cake mix,” she said. “Just ordinary cake mix. She added stuff, yeah, but it wasn’t even the good shit fromWhole Foods—it was the kind of dollar-store cake mix that’s so cheap the company can’t even