Cupcake Girl by Catherine White Read Free Book Online Page B

18:
Roses are red, violets are blue. I’m stuck here—where are you?
    I have no idea how Lexie could possibly ignore such engaging conversation starters—poetry, even—but she did. Just completely ignored them, without a single phone call, text, or email. Nothing.
    And that’s basically how the summer felt from the moment she left—empty, blank, boring. It was especially lonely since Jake wasn’t around to liven things up. But at least I could text or call him every once in a while to make sure he was alive.
    My mom wore this perpetually worried look on her face all summer, even when she was smiling. She and Jake had always spent a lot of time talking, but since I had Lexie, I guess Mom and I never connected much. But now that it was just Mom and Dad and me, I was under a magnifying glass every time we were in the same room. All their attention was focused right on me—especially Mom’s. She kept asking me about Lexie, probably hoping we would have some heart-to- heart conversation about how much I missed her and how I’d been in love with her since forever. I didn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings or anything, but that was just not going to happen.
    She kept trying, though. Her expectant look and not-so- subtle prompts made it pretty obvious that my silence hurt her feelings. But hey, it was hard enough for me not to think about Lexie every second of the day without having someone else rub in the fact that she was gone. So I tried to keep as busy as possible, which wasn’t hard since we were one man short at the marina and it was summertime. After about two weeks of total craziness and a few sixteen-hour work days, my dad finally hired an older guy named Edgar to come help out, which shaved my work days down to only nine or ten hours.
    Then I used just about every minute of my free time (or at least every minute I wasn’t hopelessly checking email) to train to become the next Elephant Man. I know it sounds weird, but don’t worry—I wasn’t on some twisted quest to acquire elephantitis or to gain a lot of weight. Rather, I was training for the Elephant Man Triathlon held every September in Truth or Consequences. It’s a sprint triathlon, so it’s a 1-mile swim, 26.2 mile bike race, and 3-mile run. Lexie and I always did the Elephant Kidz race (lovely title, huh?) until we turned sixteen and were too old for it. This would be the first time I would compete in the adult race.
    That is, of course,
if
I manage to buy a racing bike before September. At the moment I just had a mountain bike, and even if I totally rocked the swimming and running part of the race, I wouldn’t have a chance to win riding my heavy mountain bike.
    So for now I trained as if I was on a Cervelo, and hoped I would fly when I lost the heavy tire treads and extra nine pounds worth of bike. Assuming I saved enough money for a racing bike, that is.
    I’d been pretty good about sticking to my training schedule, even when I had to run in the dark or was so tired or heat-exhausted I didn’t want to do it at all. I told myself someone with the home-court advantage of training on the actual racecourse was bound to win, and I was determined that someone would be me.
    Besides, pushing myself till I felt like puking or till my heart was in my throat also helped me push out thoughts of Lexie. Kind of.

10
    Wildfire
    After three and a half long weeks of hearing nothing from Lexie, I was riding my bike in the July heat and remembered something from a few years before, probably when we were twelve or thirteen. We’d gone into Jay’s Diner to check in with Lexie’s mom, and as we were leaving we overheard another waitress say, “You better watch out, Renae, because those two are a wildfire waiting to happen.”
    At the time I had no idea what she meant, but Lexie and I both thought wildfire would be an awesome superpower. Even though we knew we were a bit old, it was the last time we spent a whole day pretending to be X-Class superheroes. It was