Know Not Why: A Novel by Hannah Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t care.”
    “Oh, come on. Let me in.”
    “No.”
    It’s like watching a fight between a sitcom
couple, to the point where I can almost hear the jolly roar of the
laugh track, ha ha ha, domestic squabbling, isn’t it cute. Kristy’s
starting to smile a little bit as Boyfriend keeps on begging to be
let in, and, ugh, you know what, I don’t want to be here, here is a
place that I don’t want to be, like, ever again, actually.
    Boyfriend. Boyfriend? Boyfriend. Boyfriend.
    Of fucking course.

Chapter Four

    “Why haven’t you said it yet?” I ask at last,
‘cause I can’t take it anymore.
    Amber looks at me. The swing creaks as she digs
her feet into the snowy ground, stilling herself. It’s already
pitch-black out, and cold as hell, but we’re at the park down the
street from our houses. It used to be our hip hangout when we were
kids, our place to run to when homework or, like, having to eat our
vegetables got to be too much stress. Sometimes, on special
super-sucky occasions, we still like to come down here, sit on the
swings, and mope. You know, tradition. She sat here with me for
awhile after my dad died, and it’s not like this can really compare
to that.
    But damned if I don’t still feel like shit.
    “Huh?” I prompt, because she hasn’t said
anything yet.
    “You look so sad,” she replies, giving me a
half-smile that’s equal parts pitying and amused. “I didn’t really
have the heart.”
    “Come on, woman,” I order, wrapping my gloved
hand around the chain of her swing, shaking it a little. “I can
take it.”
    “If you’re sure,” she says, raising her
eyebrows.
    “Oh, I’m sure.”
    “Okay then,” she says, all it’s-your-funeral.
She takes a dramatic pause, then declares, “Told you so.”
    “Here we go,” I mutter.
    “Hey, you don’t get to get pissy about it,” she
orders, swinging into me. “You forced me to.”
    “It was a test. You failed.”
    “Howwwie.”
    “Now I don’t have to get you a Christmas
present.”
    “Howie, come on.” She latches onto my swing this
time. “This was a dumb idea. Admit it. Somewhere in your
sex-starved brain—”
    “Yeah, it’s not really my brain that’s the issue
here—”
    “—you know it to be true.”
    And, well, no matter how You Know I’m Rightly
she looks at me, I’m not going to admit that. It could’ve worked,
damn it. It had potential.
    “You know what a lot of people probably thought
was a dumb idea?” I ask.
    “Don’t say the telephone.”
    “The telephone. ”
    “Freak.” Amber laughs, the sound dwindling off
into the quiet.
    “I work at an arts and crafts store,” I say
after a long silence. Just to get used to the reality, the sparse
ugly truth of it, minus the Kristy-induced haze that camouflaged
the many levels of bad.
    “Yeah, you do,” Amber agrees bluntly. Blunt’s
kind of her thing.
    “Shit,” I groan.
    “I’m so proud to be your friend,” Amber tells
me, cracking up. “I’m gonna come in every day, just to watch you in
action. I’m gonna take up artsing. And craftsing. Like a
proper female.”
    Oh, wow, that’s really encouraging.
    “Captain Scrapbook!” she intones, in her best
Mitch voice.
    I point a stern finger at her. “Uncool.”
    “Sorry,” she says, sounding very far away from
sorry.
    “Maybe I should quit,” I muse. I really dig the
idea of marching on in there and telling Arthur thanks but no
thanks, sorry, it ain’t for me, maybe I’ll try Holly’s instead. And
then Kristy will watch as I walk out, never turning my back, never
stopping to reconsider for a second, and she’ll let out a single
wistful, delicate sigh, realizing in one grand sorry-too-late-baby
epiphany exactly what she’s missing out on …
    “Maybe you should,” Amber says, and it
effectively shoots my awesome reverie to hell. “Do you want
to?”
    “Yeah,” I say. No point in lying to Amber.
That’s what my mom’s for. “But, I dunno. Might as well stick with
it, right? Since