Forever Changes by Brendan Halpin Read Free Book Online Page A

minutes with this weird music that her weird math teacher had made.
    The music got her thinking about Molly, and then she did something really stupid.  She reached into one of the many zipper pockets on her backpack and took out the envelope she had carried there for the last five months but hadn’t  looked at since last April.  Just seeing Molly’s handwriting on the outside of the envelope felt like an electric shock, and Brianna knew she might start bawling.  Put it away, she told herself, look at it later.
    But her hands kept going, opening the envelope and seeing Molly’s note. Way too short. Way way too short.  Why didn’t you write more, Molly?  Why didn’t you tell me something useful about how to do this?
    Hey Girl!  Looks like I’m on the home stretch here.  I hope you’ll read this poem at my funeral.  I like it a lot.  I love you and I’m sorry I have to go.
    Love,
    Molly
    Thirty-six words.  Just over 1.7 words for every year Molly had lived.  And then a photocopy of a poem by Robert Frost called “Good-By and Keep Cold” that Brianna had read a hundred times, that she read again now, that she couldn’t really make sense of, except, “I have to be gone for a season or so.” Now her tears were really about to come flooding out, but a tap on her shoulder snapped her back into the cafeteria.
    She hastily stuffed the envelope back into her backpack and looked at the tapper. Adam, smiling this big smile.  She was relieved that somebody had pulled her out of Molly’s funeral, but she was annoyed that it wasn’t Stephanie or Melissa.  Right time, wrong person.
    “Did you get a chance to listen to the CD?” Adam asked.
    “Yeah,” Brianna said. “You know what?  I really like it!  I mean, it’s kind of freaky.  I don’t know.  I like the way it’s kind of pretty and psycho at the same time.”
    Adam got this goofy, enthusiastic look on his face.  “I’m totally there.  I listened to it once and thought it was the weirdest piece of crap ever, but then I couldn’t do anything else until I listened to it again.  I listened to it probably five times last night.”
    So it wasn’t just her.  That was a relief.
    “I downloaded a bunch more songs from other albums if you’d like them,” Adam said.
    “Sure!” Brianna replied.  Adam reached into his bag and pulled out a CD.  Adam had printed the cover of some old Love album and put it in the jewel case; it was printed so small that Brianna couldn’t make out much except that one of the guys was wearing flood pants and ankle boots.  Which one was Eccles, thirty-five years and fifty pounds ago?
    “I was really into the lyrics, so I downloaded all of them  and printed them in the booklet,” Adam said.
    “Cool!” Brianna said with unfeigned enthusiasm.  As she took the CD, she saw Katie and Keianna, two of her “friends” watching her with Adam the geek and whispering and giggling.  They went over and sat down with Chris and Jim, two more people Brianna would have once called friends, and she felt all four of them looking  at her.
    Brianna took the CD and put it in her bag and thought this semi-dorky guy had done more for her in the last two days than most of the people she’d once considered friends ever had.
    “Thanks a lot, Adam,” she said.
    “Okay, well, I better go,” Adam said, looking over her shoulder.  “Bye!” he called as he practically ran away.
    Stephanie arrived about one second later.
    “Hey, Bri, how’s your hot friend?” Stephanie said, grinning.
    “Shut up.  He’s good.”
    “I saw his body language.  I don’t know, Bri, I think he likes you.”
    “He does not.  We’re math buddies,  and he made me a CD and—”
    “He made you a
CD?
And he doesn’t like you?  Yeah, okay.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Making somebody a CD is a way of saying, ‘I was thinking about you when I was home.  Alone.  In my
bedroom
. With a box of tissues and—’”
    “Okay, okay,