Anywhere But Here by Stephanie Hoffman McManus Read Free Book Online Page B

stupid project, or if Shae and I had drawn different numbers. Our lives would have gone on like normal, neither one of us knowing what could happen when the troubled bad boy going nowhere and the unattainable cheerleader with a bright future were thrust together.
    So what did happen? Something that never should have been, because only in fantasies do guys like me get the girl, and there was no question, that Shae was her. The girl every guy wished he could have. The worst part was, none of them even knew her. Guys like her douchebag ex-footballer, Jeremy Black, and the rest of them, they just saw the same thing I saw before that year. Perfection. The kind you want to touch and own, just to see if it could be real.
    Jeremy wanted her to make himself look good. He actually believed he deserved her, was entitled to her.
    It was a lie though. All of it. He never deserved her, and she wasn’t perfect. She was more than that. Perfection isn’t real. It’s an idea, the thing we all reach for, but can never quite touch, the one thing we think we need and then we’ll have it made. The truth is, even if we could somehow reach that image of perfection we have in our heads, it still wouldn’t be enough, because like I said it’s a lie.
    Nobody wanted to look deep enough to see the lie in Shae’s eyes, the truth behind the girl they thought they knew. I made the mistake of looking. It wasn’t perfection I found, but something better, something worth actually fighting for. She was flawed, so beautifully flawed, but it’s in the flaws that you find the real beauty of a person. Their strengths and weaknesses. Their hopes, dreams and fears. The secrets they keep, their deepest desires and the thoughts they don’t share with anyone.
    Knowing Shae wrecked me, turned my whole world upside down, because how could the real thing, the messy person underneath the perfect façade, be better than the image I’d built up in my head? It was, and like Derek said, she worked her way deep inside me, down to the bad in my bones, and replaced it with something else. Something good, something I never thought I’d have or could ever hope to be, but she made me want it. And then it was gone.
    The only thing worse than living your whole life in the dark, is getting a glimpse of the light and knowing what you’re missing. You can shut off the light, but every time you close your eyes, you still see it. Real light, the kind that comes from inside a person, it leaves a mark on you. The mark she left was more like a brand. Permanent.
    And I wasn’t the only one marked.
    “Is it true she’s back?”
    I was inserting the key into the lock of my apartment, when she caught me in the hall. Another two seconds and I would have been safely inside.
    At fourteen, my little sister Trinity, who like me hadn’t known a lot of good in her life up to that point, thought Shaeleigh Bradford stepped into our lives straight out of a Disney movie. At twenty-one, I could still see it in her eyes when I turned around to face my baby sis.
    “Wow, what the hell happened to your face?”
    “Shae’s back, but I don’t think she’s staying long, Trin.”
    It’s like she stopped listening after I confirmed Shae was back in town, because her face split into a wide grin, clearly not all that concerned about my face anymore. “Do you know where she’s staying?”
    “It didn’t exactly come up when I ran into her. She wasn’t real thrilled to see me.” I gestured at my face.
    Again, she wasn’t listening. “Think she’s staying with her mom?”
    “Doubt it. More than likely, she’s staying in her grandmother’s house.”
    “You think it would be okay if I stopped by tomorrow?” She bit her lip nervously.
    “I don’t know, Trin. She’d probably love to see you, but . . .”
    “But what?”
    “Shae’s not the same girl we knew, so just don’t be disappointed if she’s a total bitch to you.”
    She frowned. “Why would she be a bitch to me?”
    “I