This Is What I Want to Tell You Read Online Free Page B

good in old boys’ jeans.
    Keeley was going to spend the whole summer in Oxford before our junior year and her whole life was going to change. I knew it. And mine was going to sit in place.
    Should I bring this? Keeley held up her favorite shirt. It was a long-sleeved gray baseball shirt and the ends of the sleeves were worn thin. When I looked up at her face, there were tears spilling out of her eyes.
    What’s wrong? I jumped up to hug her.
    I just don’t wanna go, she said. I just wanna stay here with you. I just wanna stay in this room. She waved around her. Keeley never liked being away from home. Even when she was at our house, we never could have sleepovers. Sometimes she’d creep up the hill at three in the morning. It wasn’t that she wanted to be there when her parents woke up. It wasn’t that she wanted to be around them. There was just something for her about the safety of her turret. About the safety of places where she could be alone.
    Listen, I told her then. It’s going to be great. You’re going to England. There are going to be so many beautiful older guys with that great accent. You’ll have your own room with a view of … what’s that river called?
    Keeley laughed.
    The Cherwell, she said. She always knew.
    She started to fold her sweater again absently.
    You’ll be, like, Miss I’ve-seen-the-world, I told her. It was my job to make her feel safe with things. To make her feel better. It was her job to make me feel better. That was how it was.
    God I’m gonna miss you, she said. Promise we’ll talk every day?
    Every day. Maybe two times a day?
    She looked at me. She bit her lip and wiped at her tears with the back of her hand.
    Noelle, she said, I’m afraid we’re not going to talk every day. I don’t know why, but I’m afraid.
    I remember when she said that. I remember it clearly. Because it was in that moment when I realized that, since we were five years old, I’d never not seen Keeley for more than a few days at a time. I’d never had to talk to her in any way but right in front of me. What was this going to mean? I was scared to ask her. It was the first time I was ever scared to ask her anything.
    When she came back, when school started, when the summer started to fall away and the leaves were turning gold and then brittle brown, while all of this was happening, I couldn’t get close to Keeley. It was like I couldn’t find her.
    And I was distracted.
    * * *
    The first Friday after school started, Jessica called me. I hadn’t seen Parker since the night at her brother’s loft, but I thought about him for at least part of every minute of every day.
    Jessica called and said Parker had told her brother to call me and Jessica and invite us to some party in the city.
    Just wear something sexy, Jessica told me.
    I had no idea what that was. I stared at my closet. I tried to think what she would wear. Finally, I wore jeans and a black T-shirt. The T-shirt was old. It was Lace’s and faded thin and sort of sheer-looking in the right light.
    When we arrived at the house, it was spilling people onto the crooked front porch and the dead, brown lawn. It wasn’t even Parker’s house. Jessica thought maybe it was someone he worked with. There were people everywhere—people in thick-soled boots and white tank tops and stringy black hair and dirty jeans and tattoos. There was smoke sitting in the hallways and music from rooms, slow and mourning from one doorway and fast and sad from another door. Even Jessica seemed a little bit nervous. We finally found Parker and her brother sitting in a bedroom. There was a twin bed and some pillows on the floor, and Parker was sitting next to a girl who was wearing a shirt with a belt over it and high red boots, and her legs were white and long and looked like bones. I stared at her.
    Hey, he said. He got up and hugged Jessica and then me. But then he gestured to me.
    Sit down.
    I did. Jessica sat next to her brother’s friend Tommy on the bed.
    So.