Golden by Jessi Kirby Read Free Book Online

tell he didn’t want to leave, but he said he’d find me at break, and he did. He was waiting for me outside of my next class, and we had our first date in the school cafeteria over undercooked cinnamon rolls and lukewarm hot chocolate.
    He claims our first date was actually a few days later, when he brought me to the top of the mountain in a gondola and we ate Chinese food out of cartons and watched the lights from town twinkle below us while the stars spread out like tiny lights far above us. I remember that night too, because I felt like someone different. Better than who I was before.
    But that first day we met is one of those things you look back on, and see, so clearly, that it was meant to be. Hesaved me from being lost and out of place, and that’s what he’s been doing ever since. I showed up here in pieces. He put me back together.
    He was the first person to really see me, and he’s been my first everything since then.
    My first kiss—in the rain, under an umbrella of pine trees, with the smell of the rain rising around us. My first “I love you,” whispered soft as the snowflakes that fell all around a few months later. He’s the first person I’ve given every bit of myself to, and the only person I’ve ever truly loved.
    After four years we know each other’s hearts and souls. We’ve grown and loved and fought and everything in between, which is why, to talk about who I am, I have to start with him. The person I am now, and who I want to be in the future, is wrapped up tight in Shane, and in us together.
    I can’t imagine it, or me, any other way.
    I close the journal, but the last line lingers. I can’t imagine it any other way either, not at all. It’s impossible to picture her the way she described herself before Shane, so scared and alone. I wonder, for a second, the same thing she did. Who would she have been if she hadn’t met him that day?Would her name have been one in the box that I passed over without a second glance? The things she wrote about in her journal, her entire life, might have been different. She might never have been any of the things she was with Shane. They might both still be alive instead of ghosts in our town.
    As tragic as the end of their story is, I’m glad it started out this way. A real-life, meant-to-be love story. I don’t want to stop reading. I flip through the pages, decide I could definitely finish it in a day, and make myself a deal: I can read it, but when I finish, I’ll seal it back up and take it to Summit Lake. Back to Julianna, like I’d decided before. I won’t talk about or show it to anyone. I’ll act like it never existed.

7.
    â€œI shall set forth for somewhere,
    I shall make the reckless choice”
    â€”“THE SOUND OF TREES,” 1916
    My phone buzzes from my desk, startling me more than it should. I glance at the number before I pick it up. Kat, of course.
    â€œMorning, sunshine. Little early for you to be awake on a day like today, isn’t it?” I say.
    She yawns. “Jesus, yes. I need some coffee.”
    â€œI thought you might say that.” It’s the perfect excuse for her to go stalk Lane some more.
    â€œSo meet me at Kismet,” Kat says, like she’s read my mind.
    I glance down at the journal, weighing my options. “Maybe later. I’m kind of busy right now.”
    Kat’s sigh comes over the phone like a gust of wind.“Really? What are you busy with? Sitting in your sweats, watching The Notebook ? She forgets who he is every time, P.”
    â€œShut up.” I laugh. “One of these days you’re going to sit down and watch it with me and I guarantee you’ll bawl your eyes out. It’s that good.”
    â€œWhatever. So you’ll meet me then? I have a plan. A brilliant plan that needs to be hashed out over coffee, with a view of Lane.”
    â€œA plan for what?”
    â€œFor our last