How We Fall by Kate Brauning Read Free Book Online Page B

sometimes I did wonder if she really meant it.
    I wouldn’t put it past her to run off with a guy, but she would have contacted her family by now. She wouldn’t leave them wondering, grieving, like this. Something was definitely wrong, and I couldn’t believe she’d run away or gotten into drugs.
    If Marcus hadn’t taken all of my attention for those first several months, maybe I would have kept up with her. Maybe I would have known where she went.
    A car pulled into the bricked driveway, so I stood up and walked down to the drive. A blue Buick four-door. I glared. I’d seen that car twice this week already. How did she even get our address?
    Sylvia rolled down her window and the faint scent of lilacs drifted toward me. “Hi,” she said. “Hi. You’re Jackie, right?”
    She couldn’t want more produce. She’d come to the stand yesterday. “Yeah. Was something wrong with the tomatoes?”
    Sunglasses held back her layered blonde hair. She tapped her forefinger on the steering wheel. A shade of aqua I’d been trying to find colored her nails. “No, no. I just wondered—you’re Marcus’s sister?” She had a put-together, cutesy look, but her back seat was heaped with trash—fast food wrappers, shopping bags, old soda cans.
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    “His cousin.”
    “Oh. Is this your place, then?”
    “It’s ours. Our families share the house.”
    “It’s a nice house.” She kept looking toward the front door.
    “Thanks.”
    “Is Marcus here?”
    “I’m not sure.” After he’d walked off like that, I wasn’t going to go find him and let him know admirers were lining up in the driveway.
    “Can you give him something for me, then?” She dug a notebook out of her purse and scribbled on it, then tore out the page and folded it over.
    “Um. Okay.” I took the note.
    “Thanks.” She rolled up her window and backed out of the driveway.
    I unfolded the paper. Her number was scrawled across the top. Underneath that,
    Text me sometime.
    - Sylvia
    Throwing it out sounded like a great idea. Or burning it.
    Cramming it down the garbage disposal.
    The dust from her car had barely settled when another engine sounded. A truck rolled past the trees that hid our house from the road. That white truck again. The same one I’d seen at the produce stand this week. Frowning, I crumpled the note in my hand.
    No one around here drove that slowly. The road was too far away for me to see his license plate. The driver turned the corner and sped up.
    I stuffed the note into my pocket. If I didn’t give it to Marcus, Sylvia might mention it, and then he’d want to know why I hadn’t given it to him.
    He had every right to text Sylvia. I was being childish. He’d 43
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    said there was nothing to worry about.
    But if he couldn’t back off a little, if we couldn’t keep things low-key, we’d have to call it off. It wouldn’t work any other way.
    Someone would find out, or we’d end up hating each other.
    It was just making out, right? The other half of us was more important. Candyland. Movies. Water fights and family dinners.
    I tried to work on college applications for the rest of the morning, but gave up and hit the “add new post” button on my blog. No matter how often Ellie had told me blogging was dying, I refused to quit. I started it in middle school as an outlet for my adolescent angst, but the world wasn’t benefiting from such a close encounter with my twelve-year-old psyche.
    I’d taken my early posts down, and the blog morphed into my ramblings about my classic film hobby. Such clever titles as
    “My First Date with Citizen Kane,” and “Here’s Looking at Me, Kid,” headed my posts, and surprisingly, people read them.
    My hits weren’t high, but my readers commented and shared my posts around much more than I’d expected.
    I didn’t know what to title this one. So many of the films that make my top list involve nontraditional or taboo relationships, I typed. The King and I , My Fair