Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend by Louise Rozett Read Free Book Online Page B

She
has super-long blond hair and green eyes, and when she smiles
she looks like a sleepy cat.
Or a high cat.
For a few days after they got home, I actually believed that
they had just been working really, really hard, and Peter was
too exhausted to speak. He barely deigned to acknowledge my
existence until he said that he was giving me his old iPhone because Amanda had gotten him a new one. That was on the third
day of their visit.
Not talking may be normal for some brothers and sisters, but
it’s not for us. Peter and I were really close. He used to look out
for me, and he was even nice to me in public. Maybe that’s because we’re four years apart—we were never really interested
in each other’s toys when we were little, or each other’s friends
when we got older.
I could go to him if I needed advice for practically any situation. And when he came home with Amanda, I was planning
to tell him how nervous I was to go back to Union after ruining
Regina’s life, and that I needed some real “coping strategies,” as
opposed to the ones that Caron and Mom were coming up with
in therapy that involved telling Regina how her actions hurt me,
by filling in the blanks of this sentence: “Regina, when you blank,
it makes me feel blank. ”
The first—and only—time I’ve ever laughed in therapy was
when I tried to imagine saying that sentence to Regina.
Anyway, there was no way I was going to ask Peter for advice
on anything while he was walking around with such a huge superiority complex. When he gave me his stupid iPhone, he actually patted me on the head and called me “kiddo.” And Amanda
gave me a weird little sad-face smile and told me I was just unbearably cute. “Pete, what’s it like to have a little sister?” she said
in front of me, using a voice that most people reserve for talking
about puppies, kittens, or babies. “Oh, look at her—how sweet.
It must just be so fun!”
Of course, now I know that they were both totally high at
the time. The only thing I don’t know is what else they were on
besides pot.
It’s really the last thing I want to talk about.
“So, did Jamie even say hi to you tonight?” Tracy asks.
Actually, it’s the second-to-last thing I want to talk about.
I shake my head without looking at her. She leans over to turn
up the Feist album she’s been playing nonstop since I told her to
get it, and she doesn’t ask me anything else.
    I’ve been lying on the trundle bed in Tracy’s room for more
than an hour, trying every trick I know to fall asleep, when I
hear it.
    At first I don’t even recognize the sound.
And then I do. It’s my phone, vibrating.
Somebody’s calling me.
I look at the clock. It’s 1:00 a.m.
    I look at Tracy, who falls asleep in all of about three seconds
and can sleep through anything. She’s passed out.
I feel around to find my phone, which has vibrated itself off
the rug and is now practically jumping up and down on the hardwood floor, probably waking up the entire house.
As my hand closes around it, a familiar tightness creeps into
my throat. My heart starts to skitter and skip beats, and my
breathing gets shallow. Supposedly once a person recognizes the
symptoms of a panic attack, she can sort of wrangle them and
keep them under control. I haven’t mastered that fine art yet, but
at least now a part of my brain stays rational as my airway tries to
close, and instead of screaming, “Am I dying?” it can ask, “Why
now?” which is apparently a much more constructive question.
Caron would say— Oh, forget Caron. I’m tired of hearing her
in my head all the time. I feel like she crawled in there and installed a whole bunch of automatic scripted responses to things.
I don’t need her to tell me why I’m on the verge of a panic attack—I already know why. It’s because the only reason anybody
ever calls anybody at 1:00 a.m. is if something is wrong. Terribly, hideously wrong.
The phone is now vibrating in my fist and I know with