Heart on a Shoestring by Marilyn Grey Read Free Book Online Page A

is, Autism speaks in ways I didn’t understand. Max couldn’t give me forgiveness. He couldn’t tell me he was okay. He couldn’t tell me that I didn’t crush his dreams and that he really, really was okay.
    He didn’t have a voice.
    “You alright?” Derek cracked my memories and peeled back reality. “You look like you’re out there somewhere.”
    “You’re not telling me everything,” I said. “And I won’t force you, because I want you to come to the point I’m at now.”
    He shifted his weight to the left and pulled his knee to his chest, then raked his head where his former hair used to be.
    I continued, “I trust you.”
    He avoided my eyes.
    I looked down too. “I’ve trusted few people with my heart, so tread lightly. I told you my brother Max and I wanted to plant something together, but we never did. See”—I steadied myself on a low tree branch—“I wanted to fit in. I was the type of girl who sat at pep rally’s and high school football games pining over boys who never knew my name. I wrote poems about them. Cried in my car to Radiohead’s Creep about them. I practiced writing my name with their last names. Knew their class schedule by heart and where they stood before the bells rang.” I stopped, inhaled as much air as possible, and looked at the grey clouds before I continued. “Finally, my chance had come. I did something dumb. I called this guy randomly from my friends house, blocked my number, and told him I wouldn’t reveal my identity until he guessed who I was. I’d call him every night at eight and give him one clue each night. To my surprise, he loved our conversations and seemed as excited as I was. Then one day I messed up. I was relaying a story and accidentally said my name. A few nights later he figured out my identity. It was so awkward after that. He stopped calling. I thought we’d fall in love and it would be magical. The unknown girl gets the popular guy. The Taylor Swift song comes to life.”
    “So, then what?”
    “He called me one night. I almost had a heart attack. He knew who I was and still called me. A few minutes into the conversation he told me about this beautiful girl he liked and asked my advice for how to approach her. My heart probably stopped beating as I told him what a girl would like. Anyway, long story short, he ended up with her and I got depressed. That soon turned into a determination to become so beautiful and popular that he would regret his decision. So I had a bit of a transformation and showed up at school one day. No one recognized me. I felt so high on life. All the guys turned their heads. And by the end of the week I was drinking with the cool kids, who turned out to be not as cool as I imagined.”
    “Did he regret his decision?”
    “Who knows, but I got so into my new status that I made the biggest regret of my life. Well, several of them, including marijuana episodes, but there’s one that I just can’t forget.
    “My little brother was outside one morning. I was a junior in high school and loving life. He was watering the grass in the front yard when I pulled up and  got out of my car. He liked watering plants and grass. He’d just stare at the stream of water for hours if we let him. He was really young at the time and I had already started ignoring him to be with my friends. When I got out of the car my brother started jumping up and down and making all kinds of weird sounds. Cool guy that I had a crush on pulled up to my house. Asked if I lived there. I said, ‘No,’ embarrassed of Max. He got out of the car and asked me out on a date. Then he started jumping up and down making fun of Max. I was worried he wouldn’t believe my lie if I didn’t make fun of Max too. So I did.”
    “This isn’t that bad, Miranda.” He seemed so sure. So sure of all my uncertainties. “It’s nothing compared to what I did.”
    “I’ve barely talked to Max since.” Tears dripped from my eyes, meddling with the rain. “He closed