We Were Never Here Read Online Free

asked her anything ?
    Wait for me.
    â€œYou know. Angelo,” she said, as if I hadn’t heard her the first time.
    â€œHmmm,” I said. The nausea, which is always there now, I can’t get rid of it no matter what I do, began to rise in my throat. My mother hummed to herself as she folded my underwear, piling it into neat stacks.
    â€œSo that’s been, like, really brilliant. Blinding. With Angelo, I mean.”
    Nora and her British slang. I’m not sure if she studied it or overheard it on her family trip to London or read it in some novel, but man has it made its way into her . . . lexicon.
    â€œOnce he kissed me when we were picking blackberries,” she went on. And on. “In the daytime. I’m such a tart!”
    â€œCool,” I said. But I really didn’t care. Like Really. Didn’t. Care. I was impressed, though. I couldn’t even imagine ever kissing anyone in the sun.
    â€œCheeky girl,” said Nora. She actually said this, and even I know cheeky means you have to have said something . . . sassy. “So what’s going on with you?” she asked.
    â€œIt’s money in here,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
    Nora was silent.
    My mother, bent at the waist, stopped for a moment and then resumed her organizing.
    â€œNo really, it’s like the best vacation I’ve ever had.” I thought of the pain meds but refrained from making a drug reference due to my mother’s ever-presence. Better than smoking pot, I wanted to say, but that wasn’t true anyway. Nora and I smoked together once this summer, and we just lay on our backs in the woods and looked up to the sky and watched the leaves rustle on the trees.
    Nora cleared her throat. “Sorry, Lizzie,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I was just calling to say I hope you get better soon. Everyone missed you a lot at the last bonfire. It was all so sad.”
    It seemed so far away from me, already. I might never be able to go back there, never again be that girl singing along to some guitar like nothing had ever happened, setting my marshmallowson fire. That’s how I liked them. Blazed.
    What if I’m just sad forever? I thought. It’s almost like I was never there.
    Nora kept apologizing to me.
    â€œThanks,” I said to Nora.
    I couldn’t picture her in Baltimore—what did Baltimore look like? What did Nora’s room look like? Were there Clash and Sex Pistols posters on the wall? Daniel Radcliffe? Bloody Edward Cullen? I just didn’t care anymore—and so instead I pictured the lake lit with candles, paper boats flaming and then blazing bright before going out. How would I just push a boat out on the lake and make a wish now? A wish: no more pain or fear.
    â€œBye,” I said, and hung up.
    But if I had let that boy in, if I’d let him in and said hello, if he’d been mine then, mine , just the thought of him, maybe I wouldn’t have been so angry. If I’d had him to think of and wonder about and hope and hope and hope for, maybe I wouldn’t have felt that there was nothing ahead of me. And then maybe I wouldn’t have felt so left behind.

Still Day 4: The Anatomy of an Innocent Frog
    My mother comes in and says, “It’s not botulism.”
    How sick am I? I want to know and I also don’t want to know.
    She takes the remote and makes a big production of flipping off the TV. My mother hates television. “They think it’s something else, but we have to eliminate all the other things.”
    I ignore her. One day I will want these details, perhaps, but I decide I want to avoid them right now. I don’t tell her about the boy and the dog. Instead, I say, “I was actually watching that.” Someone was blathering on and on about how to talk to your boss if you’re a woman and he’s a man. “It seemed like useful information for me and my new life. My new