Love All: A Novel by Callie Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

Already there was green grass on the fields and tiny yellow buds on the trees and sunlight that did more than create shadows, that actually felt warm.
    Sam pointed to the OPs and I forked him the Marlboros, then offered Carl a Camel and took one for myself. Sam flicked his topless mermaid, lighting us up.
    Since the sixth grade, when our class had moved from the elementary school to the combined middle and high school, the three of us had spent so much time together that we’d started to sound alike, mimicking one another’s speech patterns, a language that morphed and evolved even as we spoke it—we heard words in class, then poached them; or made them up, then tweaked them and mispronounced them, then forged on. When we’d read Hamlet in the ninth grade, Sam latched on to Get thee to a nunnery and repeated it whenever he needed a cigarette, until we were all saying it, until we had a slitter for the places where we smoked our OPs.
    But just now no one spoke. The cool breeze blew across our faces and lifted my windbreaker at the hem. Sam puffed through squinty eyes, turning his back to the wind to exhale. His lips were dry and flaking, like they’d been sunburned, or kissed too hard. The summer after ninth grade, Sam had started taking Accutane, and it wasn’t like an overnight thing but by September his skin had turned from swollen red to milky white, and I’d begun to notice things. Sam’s eyes changed colors, shading from sea green to midnight blue. He had a small bowtie-shaped birthmark below his Adam’s apple, like he was always dressed up, always fancy, ready to go. When he buzzed his white-blond hair, I ran my fingers first with the grain, then against it, until something between us shifted and I quickly pulled away.
    Sam and Megan. I knew I’d get him to tell me eventually, but not here.
    Beside us, Carl scuffed the soles of his worn Adidas across the dewy grass and made a footprint with his right foot near the base of the cement shed next to the propane tank. Then he lifted his left foot and stamped his sole above and to the side of the first print. We watched and smoked. Carl worked quickly, clipping his OP between his lips and putting both hands in the grass to balance while he made the last footprint, shoulder height, and it looked like someone had walked up the side of the building. The sun was already drying the first footprints, so it was good for only a moment, but still we’d never thought of it before.
    When the warning bell rang, I flicked my OP into the grass and Sam crushed his out on the sole of his shoe, then he and Carl fell into place beside me as we drifted slowly back toward the school.
    “How was your week?” asked Sam.
    My face felt hot and my eyes started to burn. “Nonz died,” I admitted. “And Poppy moved in.”
    “Are you kidding?” asked Carl.
    I shook my head.
    Sam asked when it had happened and I said, “Monday night. Right after you left.”
    “Jules,” said Sam softly.
    Maybe he wanted to say he was sorry or that he wished he’d been here. The truth was, Nonz had died and I’d half-expected both of them to feel it eight hundred miles away.
    “That sucks,” Sam said finally, and Carl, whose dad had died when we were six, said, “Yeah, I hate shit like that,” and then the bell rang for first period and Carl and I high-stepped it so we wouldn’t be late for Mr. Robin’s pre-calc.
    Mr. Robin had zero tolerance for us, especially Carl, who sometimes seemed to have Tourette’s, he had such a hard time being quiet. We’d both been given assigned seats at the beginning of the school year: I was front-row center so Mr. Robin could keep an eye on me, while Carl was back-left, a halo of empty seats circling him so that he wouldn’t be tempted to talk. Mr. Robin rolled a stub of chalk between his thumb and pointer finger, waiting for us to settle. His white hair stood up like a cock’s comb and his kelly-green sweater-vest was tight over his barrel chest; he looked