A Year Straight by Elena Azzoni Read Free Book Online Page B

of my UTI, no one batted an eye. They probably assumed I was on the Master Cleanse again.
    â€œWho’s this?” I asked, picking up their ragged, milky-eyed Chihuahua.
    â€œThat’s Chico,” they replied in unison, beaming. “We rescued him from a kill shelter. Hey, you should come over for wine tonight. We redid the kitchen.”
    â€œYeah, we did it all ourselves,” my other friend chimed in. “Rented a power sander and everything.”
    I would have liked going over to their house to hang out. But I was nervous. They’d be sure to ask probing questions, and I’d never been good at lying. My mom always said,
almost pitying me, “Oh, Elena, you can’t get away with anything.” From hoarding the forbidden Garbage Pail Kids cards to skipping out on assembly at school, I always got caught. And although something huge had shifted, some things never change.
    I left the drugstore with only a magazine. At home I sat down at my table for four and browsed an empty article about the feud between Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. For the first time in a while, I felt alone. The loneliness was accompanied by a wave of nausea, which reinforced my pregnancy fear. To stave off the panic, I searched online for common symptoms:
    â€¢ Nausea, check.
    â€¢ Swollen or tender breasts, check.
    â€¢ Fatigue, check.
    â€¢ Unusual food cravings, check.
    Falling farther into the chasm, I clicked on a link for a due-date calculator. Based on my last period, my maybe baby would be a Gemini. Nooo! I called TJ.
    â€œDumbass, I thought you were dead,” she said, sounding extra husky.
    â€œDon’t get your hopes up. Let’s go get some tea.”
    â€œTea? Make it Bloody Marys. I think I’m still drunk from the Cock Block Party last night. Hey, where were you? Brianna
was deejaying. I was sure you’d be up on stage putting on your S&M show.” I cringed. One benefit of not going out to lesbian parties was that I was drinking less. Knowing all the bartenders on a personal basis always (and usually unfortunately) meant free unlimited drinks. The last time I’d gone out, my friend Brianna and I were chatting (yelling, rather) over the deafening music during our long wait for the ladies’ room. I blame whiskey and the charged atmosphere for the incident that followed. When Brianna enthusiastically told me she’d recently seen Madonna in concert, I screamed, “No way!” and slapped her square across the face. To this day I have no idea why, and I have not had any more whiskey. I apologized profusely and excused myself to the pizza place up the street, where I soaked up the alcohol with a slice of cheese twice the size of my head.
    â€œI told you never to remind me of that, asswhole.” (This was how TJ both pronounced and spelled it, so I did too, for I was not about to correct her.) She also thought Stonehenge was Stone Hedge, as I discovered on a cross-country trip we made together once. She was sure she was right, arguing that it made more linguistic sense, the site being somewhat of a hedge and all. When I won the bet, she was the one pumping gas for the rest of the three-thousand-mile trip—sun, rain, or snow, all three often appearing within the same state.
    â€œListen,” I said, in between sips of my virgin Bloody Mary (with extra pickles, please), “I have to tell you something. I’ve barely told a soul, and I want to keep it that way.”

    â€œWell, you can tell me. I have no soul,” TJ said, trying to spear an olive with her straw. I could always count on TJ. She listened attentively as I confessed my yoga teacher obsession and then, the graver felony, sleeping with the lawyer and my potential pregnancy predicament.
    â€œWow,” TJ said, sitting back in her chair, disturbingly pleased with herself. “If I’ve ever wanted blackmail material, this trumps anything I could have thought up on my own,