If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo Read Free Book Online Page A

eyebrow.
    â€œAndrew,” I said. My rib cage started to collapse. My heart thumped in my ears.
    â€œIs that your real name?”
    A woman with broad shoulders and a faint shadow of a beard under her makeup entered next. She looked strong and stout, but the longer I looked the more I saw the beauty in her—here a light step, here a brief touch of the hair, here a wide, open smile. Boone said, “Evening, Rhonda,” to greet her.
    â€œAmanda,” I said then. “It’s … I mean it’s not my name, but I always wanted it to be. So, Amanda, I guess.”
    â€œWould you like it if we called you that?” Moira asked. Her dark-ringed eyes bore down on me, but the corners of her mouth turned up in a faint smile.
    â€œI’m not sure,” I said. My chest felt tight but warm and my breathing was shallow. “I think I want that.”
    â€œWell, then, I would like to introduce my friend Amanda to everyone,” Virginia said, squeezing my hand and smiling. My eyes burned suddenly, and when I rubbed my cheek, my hand came away wet. I tried to remember the last time I had been able to cry.

 
    6
    Anna insisted on giving me a ride to the party Saturday night. Dad and I had been avoiding each other for most of the week, but he actually looked like he might smile when she picked me up in front of the apartment complex in her family’s green minivan. Maybe the religious bumper stickers stuck all over the van’s backside like wallpaper reassured him I was making friends with the right people.
    We pulled up to the house as the setting sun limned the western mountains in red and purple. The house was white and ranch-style and looked like it could be on the cover of Southern Living . A garden overflowed with flowers in full bloom. I knew all of their names: Indian pinks, white rain lilies, Stokes aster, false indigo. Mom had taught me them years before, until Dad found me gardening, and they fought.
    Inside, music rattled the floors and kids were packed together tightly, red Solo cups in hand. A keg stood by the entrance to the kitchen, a line snaking around the corner. Chloe and Layla waved us over as soon as we walked in, giving us both hugs. In the last week I’d been given more hugs than in my entire life combined. I was anxious about anyone touching me and my reflex was to tense up and jump away, but once I took a deep breath and relaxed I found that I actually enjoyed it, that momentary contact that said you weren’t alone.
    Chloe directed me toward the kitchen, telling the other girls we’d get them drinks—beer for Layla and water for Anna, who didn’t drink. I started to say I didn’t drink either, but then I remembered I had gotten high two days before, and suddenly a beer hardly felt adventurous at all.
    When it was just the two of us, Chloe leaned in close. “Thanks again,” she said. “For Thursday.”
    â€œI have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told her with a smile.
    She tapped her red cup against mine. “You know everybody here talks about how much other people talk,” she said. I was pretty sure that was more words together than I had heard her use all week. “But the more they talk about how shameful it is, the more they do it.”
    Behind us, Layla and Anna were fiddling with our host’s iPhone and speakers. They shrieked happily as a new song came on.
    â€œIf you ever want someone to talk to,” I told her, “I know how to keep a secret.”
    *   *   *
    Twenty minutes later I sat on a countertop staring out at the sea of people filling the house. Anna, Layla, and Chloe were all talking to other people, so I tried to look busy as I sipped gingerly from my red plastic cup and tapped my heel in time with the Top 40 hits blaring over the speaker. I was unimpressed with beer—it tasted like stale bread and water, and it wasn’t making me feel any