The Way Back to You Read Online Free Page B

twisting layouts in the patio furniture department. She’d always ask me in the same way, her eyes lighting with a challenge, as if she didn’t already know I’d take the dare.
    The makeup section never comes first anymore, if I go there at all.
    Zoë stands by while I grab the essentials: a bag of sour gummy worms for my personal stash and some Dum Dums for the gift basket I’m making for tomorrow’s cheer event. Zoë eschews empty calories and preservatives, and is obviously of alien stock, so she ignores the candy.
    Then she follows me to the home decor department, where I pick a stalk of fake daffodils that I’ll cut up and drop into the basket for extra flair. If it were warmer, I’d pluck real ones from our garden, but these will do. Afterward, Zoë leads me to the DVD section. She is the last human being under thirty who still visits it, and five bucks says she leaves with something black and white and boring all over.
    I’m elbow-deep in the comedies when Zoë comes up behind me and shoves a DVD case under my nose. I’m surprised it was made this century; on the other hand, it looks like it has enough slash and gore to trigger a fit.
    “Come on, Zoë.” I raise an eyebrow. “A scary movie?”
    Bunching her lips to one side, she says, “So what?”
    I peer over her shoulder at the other racks. “No newdocudrama snoozefest out this week?”
    “I’m allowed to like different things, you know.”
    She passes the case over, and I take it, reluctant. I barely read the story synopsis on the back cover, focusing instead on the snapshots of attractive, desperate-looking actors, their eyes and mouths open wide. A creepy, bloody movie is so un-Zoë—oh, but there’s the magic word: subtitled.
    “It’s a foreign film.”
    “Korean,” she clarifies.
    “How did you even hear about it?”
    “This boy Owen told me. It’s one of his favorites.”
    My fingers freeze. A month ago, Zoë came home from school jabbering nonstop. Owen had recommended a thriller about a guy who’d had a brain transplant; afterward he started having visions of his donor’s life, and isn’t that just so metaphysical. Zoë speculated, out loud, to me, about whether it could actually happen, but I shut her down. It wasn’t real, and it wasn’t worth wondering.
    “Sounds like This Boy Owen needs a rom-com weekend,” I say, tossing the DVD back at her.
    She blinks at me. “He has exceptionally eclectic taste.”
    I force an interested smile, steering the topic elsewhere. “So what’s up with you and This Boy Owen?”
    Zoë’s cheeks redden and her eyes go round. She’s fallen for it. “We have some of the same classes. That’s it.”
    “If he’s trying to woo you with the slaughter of innocents, I feel like I should know more about him. Like, okay: How many decapitated dolls does he keep in his locker?”
    She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Enjoying well-made horror films does not make someone a psychopath, Cloudy.”
    “ De -fensive.” I waggle my eyebrows.
    “It’s not like that,” she says, a little breathless, so it’s obvious that it’s exactly like that. “He has a girlfriend, anyway.”
    I watch her for a moment more, a familiar slump in her shoulders. He has a girlfriend, anyway must be the Marlowe sister motto. “Well. Plenty of other single doll decapitators out there for you, I promise.”
    And if anyone knows that feeling something for a guy who’s into someone else is a black hole, so willing to suck you in and twist you up, it’s me. Better to cut the heartstrings now while they’re not so tangled.
    I HEAD TOWARD the toy section so I can pick up more things for the gift basket. The squad is raffling them off at tomorrow’s fund-raiser for the public library. On my way across the store, my phone buzzes in my bag.
    Cheer Insider is obsessed with you! Slight exaggeration, but let’s talk, please?
    A text from my friend Jade, with a screenshot of Cheer Insider announcing our