Forever in Blue by Ann Brashares Read Free Book Online Page B

some up when we go into town,” Carmen said apologetically.
    “Seriously, it’s fine,” Julia assured her.
    Julia fell asleep at some point, but Carmen lay in her bed. She had to remind herself where she was.
    After a while she got up and checked the list that she and Julia had made for her to take to the pharmacy. Teramax conditioner was not on it.
    She went out to the hall to call Lena. Lena didn’t answer, so she left a message. Tibby didn’t answer either, and Bridget had already left for Turkey.
    Even though it was late, she called her mom.
    “Nena, hi. Is everything okay?” her mom asked in a groggy voice.
    “Fine. We’re just settling in here.”
    “How does it seem?”
    “Good,” Carmen said without really thinking about it. “How’s Ryan?”
    Her mom laughed. “He threw his shoes out the window.”
    “Oh, no. His new walking ones?”
    “Yes.”
    Carmen pictured Ryan and his tiny sneakers and she pictured her mom racing around trying to locate them.
    “Street or courtyard?”
    “Street, of course.”
    Carmen laughed. “So what else is going on?” she asked, somewhat wistfully.
    “We met with the painters today.” Her mother said it as though she’d met with the president.
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “We’re having them skim coat every wall. We’re starting to choose colors.”
    Carmen yawned. She didn’t have much to say about skim coating.
    “Okay, Mama, well, sleep tight.”
    “You too, nena. I love you.”
    Carmen tiptoed back into the room and crawled into bed, careful not to wake Julia, who was a light sleeper.
    Carmen knew her mother loved her. That used to provide a certain sufficiency. That alone had been enough to make her feel like somebody.
    It used to feel like she and her mother were almost one person, living one life. Now their lives were separate. Her mother’s identity wasn’t one she could tag along with anymore.
    It didn’t mean her mother didn’t love her. She’d given Carmen life, but she couldn’t be expected to keep giving it. And yet Carmen wasn’t sure how to live by herself.
    She tucked her hands under her pillow, and even though she could hear Julia’s breathing a few feet away, she felt terribly lonely.
    When Lena got to her room that night, she called Carmen back, hoping it wasn’t too late. “I have to ask you something and don’t jump all over me,” she said, after giving Carmen a chance to relocate to the hallway.
    “As if I would,” Carmen said, too curious to pretend to be hurt for long.
    “Am I over Kostos, do you think?”
    “Did you meet someone else?” Carmen asked.
    Lena gazed at the ceiling. “No.”
    “Did you look at someone else?”
    Lena felt herself blushing and was glad Carmen couldn’t see. Carmen had always combined an extravagant capacity for near psychic brilliance and total obtuseness, but she rarely used them both at the same time. “Why do you ask?”
    “Because I think you will be officially over Kostos when you talk about—even really look at—somebody else.”
    “Isn’t that a little simplistic?”
    “No,” said Carmen.
    Lena laughed.
    “One of these days you are going to fall in love and forget about him. Sooner or later it has to happen. I’d hoped it would be sooner.”
    Lena crossed her feet under her on the bed. Could she forget Kostos? Was that what she was supposed to be striving for? She’d so far aimed at “getting over” him, whatever that meant, and she often prided herself on making strides toward that goal. But it was hard to imagine forgetting. She wasn’t really the forgetting type.
    “I don’t know if that’s possible.”
    “I think it is. I think it will happen. And you know what else I think about Kostos?”
    Lena sighed. She had reached her limit of saying the name Kostos out loud and far exceeded her limit of hearing it said by others. “No, smarty. What?”
    “I have this weird premonition that as soon as you forget about Kostos, you are going to see him again.”
    Lena felt activity