The Wild One Read Online Free Page B

don’t even like him enough to be heartbroken about him, why was I even dating him in the first place?
    I just want to be happy.
    And I don’t know how.
    â€œWhat makes you happy, Vic?”
    â€œMe?” Vic pauses. “Being me. No one else gets to be me except me. No one else gets my life, no one else gets my memories. I like being me.”
    I don’t like being me.
    Vic thinks for a moment. “There’s something else too. While I could, I made the love of my life happy … Making the people you love happy. That’s the real secret.”
    I don’t have a love of my life. I can’t even imagine feeling that way. I can’t even imagine saying it.
    â€œBut how am I ever going to figure out what to do with my life?”
    â€œJust think about what you truly love. What makes you smile. After that, everything will be easy.” I nod, gulping. Nothing makes me smile.
    â€œSo, listen. You wanna help me join up this Facebook thing?” says Vic finally.
    â€œSure!” I hurry down the stoop, delighted to have a distraction. “Do you have a computer, Vic?”
    â€œI do. It’s got a piece of fruit on it.”
    I sign Vic up to Facebook pretty quickly, and within twenty minutes, he’s requested about fifty friends, and messages keep popping up. Jeez. He’s eighty-something years old but has more Facebook fun than I do.
    â€œYou’re so popular,” I say.
    He shrugs. “You live this long, you meet a lot of people,” he says. “Imagine if half my friends weren’t dead.”
    I laugh despite myself. It does not seem appropriate.
    Vic stares at the screen for a few moments, then frowns. “So, what does it do now?”
    â€œUm, nothing, you have to, you know, find people you know, or find things you like.”
    â€œAnd then what do you do when you find things you like?”
    â€œYou press the Like button.”
    â€œWhy?”
    I pause. Why? “So everyone knows what you like?”
    â€œWho cares what I like? I don’t care what everyone else likes.”
    â€œOh,” I say. I do. I really care what everyone else likes. It’s how I learn what’s important.
    Vic stands up. “Well, this has been great, but I gotta get down to Esposito’s before they sell out of my lasagne. Want to join?”
    â€œNo … I think I’ll stay here and try to think about what would make me truly happy.”
    Impossible things would make me happy.
    That my mother was still alive.
    That I’d never slept with Eric … I shake my head quickly, before I can think about the termination and everything that happened that day and after. I’d be happy if I’d never dated Ethan, especially when I didn’t really like him at first, I just liked that he liked me. If Ethan never cheated on me.
    If I had a body like a Victoria’s Secret Angel, and I could magically erase every piece of junk food from my eating history.
    If my former best friend who slept with Eric on prom night gets alopecia so all her hair falls out.
    If I never have to work at Little Gardens again.
    But, gradually, I whittle it down.
    This is a secret list—I’ll never show anyone—and it’s the bare essentials.
    These are the three things missing from my life, the things that I need in order to truly be happy.
    My Happy List
    1. Be thin
    2. Fall in love
    3. Figure out what to do with the rest of my life
    If that’s my happy life … no wonder I’m so unhappy now. I am so far from all of those things.
    Thinking this, I lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling, at the tiny glow-in-the-dark stars my mom put there when she was a little girl. A few of them were traced around in colored pencil and then removed, leaving little star stencils all across the ceiling. My mom was very naughty when she was little, apparently. I never would have done that. You know how all families have roles that everyone