Smashed Read Online Free Page A

anything.”
    “I’m fine ,” I insisted, sitting down on his bed.
    What else could I say? I could lie and tell him that I was sick—the flu or something—but I already felt bad enough without a lie to my best friend topping off my brilliant last twenty-four hours. But I couldn’t tell him the truth: that I’d been out drinking until two in the morning, that I had the beer hangover from hell, and that I’d been so smashed the night before that Alec Osborne had driven me home—that, in fact, my car was still at Cheryl’s camp.
    No, that wouldn’t fly with Matt. Never mind the Alec-driving-me-home part; Matt thought drinking was a complete waste of time. If I told him the truth, I’d have to listen to another one of his drinking-is-for-idiots speeches. Even without a pounding headache, I couldn’t endure that.
    Besides, this was important. Photography was to Matt what field hockey was to me—his passion, maybe even his future. He’d been snapping pictures for years, and right from the start he’d had an eye for unusual things. He’d shoot a bug from inchesaway, or a crumpled candy wrapper, or a drain pipe that ran down the wall of our school. He’d lie down on the ground and take a picture of the side of the building, looking up .
    He knew going to art school was probably crazy, that the chances of making a living taking pictures was pretty slim, and that his parents worried about that. But he had to try. Selecting photos for a portfolio was the first step.
    I took a sip of water from the glass I clutched and tried once again not to throw up. “Come on,” I said to Matt. “Let’s look at some pictures.”

4
    “This could use a little trim,” Alec said. He was standing on the edge of my overgrown lawn the next day. Neglected for two weeks, the grass had become overrun with hundreds of bright yellow dandelions.
    “Yeah, a little one,” I said.
    He laughed. “You ready?”
    Alec’s unmistakable blue and silver pickup truck, lawn mower in the back, sat like a circus elephant in the driveway. I might as well have had a loudspeaker pointed at Matt’s house blaring the news of Alec’s appearance at my house. Matt and his father were not yet home, but the sooner we left, the better.
    “Thanks again,” I said as we pulled out of the driveway. “My mom is never around, and I wouldn’t have had any other way to get to work tonight.”
    “Where’s your mom?” he asked.
    “She’s a nurse in Portland. Maine Medical pays better, especially when she works nights and overtime, and she’s tryingto save for my college. In case I don’t get a scholarship.”
    “For field hockey?” He caught my eye. “You’ll get it,” he said, like he knew—just knew —I would. Why did he have such confidence in me?
    It was like he could read my thoughts. “I’ve seen you play plenty of times,” he added. “Believe me, you’ll get one.”
    “Anyway, my mom is stressed out about paying for my college.”
    “She’s got a long commute.”
    “She doesn’t drive it every day. She started staying down there after she met this doctor. We hardly see her anymore.”
    “I hope you like him better than I like my stepmother,” he said, turning onto the main road.
    “No worries there. I never even met him. A couple years ago, she started going on this dating spree. The guy she sees now is, like, doctor number five or six. I met one of them once—he actually came out here—but then she broke up with him for a surgeon. It turned out later that he was married.”
    “The one she broke up with?”
    “No, he was nice. The surgeon.” Why was I talking so much?
    The windows were down, but it was hot and sticky. Maples and oaks, their lush, green leaves heavy in the dead air, stood motionless in rolling fields. The occasional house rushed by. In between, long stretches of pines and birches closed in around the road, a thick, scraggly forest grown in where farmland used to be. Alec turned on the air conditioner and we