For Good by Karelia Stetz-Waters Read Free Book Online Page B

to.”
    “You didn’t mean to ?” Kristen didn’t know if she wanted Marydale to say that she meant the kiss or that of course she didn’t mean it; she was straight. They were friends. That was all.
    Marydale stood up and walked to the porch railing, staring out at the dark yard.
    “I won’t tell anyone. I know I get it wrong,” Marydale said.
    Kristen thought she saw Marydale’s shoulders tighten.
    “You’re a lesbian,” Kristen said.
    It was obvious now. She heard the man outside the diner yelling, She’s not gonna to fuck you, if that’s what you’re thinking. She saw Grady tipping the brim of his enormous hat. Some people downright dislike her.
    It was easy to forget there were places like Tristess. In Portland, everyone was gay. Even the straight men were gay, with their shoulder bags and their hair pulled up in man-buns. In Tristess, women were still females, and there seemed to be a rhinestone quotient that every woman was required to meet.
    Marydale shook her head, but she wasn’t saying no.
    “Hey.” Kristen stood up and put her hand on Marydale’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m straight.” It came out sounding like a question. “But it’s not a big deal. I know it probably is here, but it’s not in the rest of the world. Forget about it. I’m flattered, really.”
    Kristen wanted to pull Marydale back into a kiss, not for sex but because Marydale looked so sad. Kristen wanted to say, Do you know how beautiful you are?
    Instead she said, “I’m sure there’s someone out there for you.” She thought of the teenage waitress at the diner with her sweet, mean smile, and of the grim, heavy women who pumped gas at the Arco, and she thought of the books Marydale had tucked around the house. And she thought, Probably not. “I know it’s hard in Tristess. You could always move.”
    Marydale ran her hands through her hair. Kristen could almost see her slipping into her persona, like the girl in the family portrait putting on her glittery, red smile.
    “I can’t,” Marydale said. “But I understand…I understand if you need to.”
    It took Kristen a moment to realize what she was saying.
    “We’re roommates. It would be weird if we…you know. But I don’t have to move because you’re gay. If you knew how little stuff like that matters in Portland. Really,” Kristen said. “I’d be more upset if you started bringing some creepy boyfriend home. A lot of my friends…” She was going to say are lesbian, but in truth, the lesbians she knew at the law school had been an intimidating bunch, with their fauxhawks and their bracelets made out of old bike tires. “I like you as a friend,” she finished. “It doesn’t matter what you are.”
      
    Back in her bedroom, Kristen stood in front of the dresser mirror. She took off her glasses and leaned in. Her shoulder-length hair looked professional, but it also looked matronly. When she was eighteen, people had told her she looked like a young Jodie Foster, but she had not grown up to be a twenty-seven-year-old Jodie Foster. She had grown up to be the kind of woman who left parties early to finish her laundry. But Marydale Rae had kissed her. Beautiful Marydale. She’s just lonely , Kristen thought. We’re just lonely. But still she replayed the moment again and again in her imagination. When she lay down, she slipped her hand under the hem of her nightgown and touched herself slowly, trying to remember every detail of their kiss.

8
    Marydale sat in a plastic chair in front of her parole officer’s desk, a Bookmobile library book clasped in her hands. Behind her, the door was open to prevent false allegations of misconduct between parolee and parole officer . The office hummed with the sound of copiers and muffled voices.
    “What do you think you’re up to?” Cody Densen folded his arms across his chest, obscuring the word parole stamped there in white block letters.
    Marydale looked at the book in her hands and then back at Cody. They