Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

and terrible poetry in my desk drawer. Melanie thought it was hilarious, and at first I had agreed, secretly pleased to be the object of somebody’s attention, even a loser like Ricky Benning, but now it was only embarrassing.
    I opened Diane’s invitation and called Melanie.
    â€œI can’t believe she invited you,” Melanie said, laughing. “Ithought for sure you’d be off the list this year. You have a reputation now.”
    I was lying on my bed in my basement bedroom. The day was hot and sticky, but the basement was always cool, even through the long summer afternoons. The glow-in-the-dark sticker stars on my ceiling were faint yellow smudges against the off-white paint. Melanie’s words stung, but I wasn’t about to let her know. I remembered my aunt Colleen giving me a warning a few years before, as we were fixing Thanksgiving dinner. Colleen had said, “You have to be careful, Breezy. I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but nobody ever cares about having a reputation until they’ve got a bad one.”
    Melanie loved that I had a bad reputation now, but she hated it too. She hated that there were things I had done before her, without her help, without her input. Her jealousy was petty, needlelike, deployed at unpredictable moments. I didn’t have any defenses against it. Not against Melanie. Not against my best friend. All I had was the naive hope that after three months of summer nobody would care any more about the rumors that had raced around before the end of the school year. Mostly true, but not completely: I did have sex with Michael Chaffert, my first time and he knew it, but I didn’t know he had a girlfriend at the time, and I definitely didn’t beg him to introduce me to all his friends for a whole summer of repeat performances. I don’t think anybody even believed that last part; everybody knew Michael couldn’t tell the truth about girls or sex if his life depended on it. But what they believed and what they laughed about were two different things.
    After a few weeks I had realized that denying Michael’s versionof events wasn’t making any difference, so I chose another tactic. I told anybody who mentioned it that fucking Michael had been the dullest three minutes of my life and I couldn’t even be sure it had happened at all, that’s how little I felt, emphasis on the little . Maybe it wasn’t in line with Aunt Colleen’s well-meaning advice, but I had decided, as soon as ninth grade ended, that it was better to be scornful than shamed.
    It didn’t matter anyway, not after Cherie Kostova turned up drunk on the first day of school and wrecked her car on the third, and not after a junior named Samantha French announced that he was now Samuel French and the teachers and counselors scrambled to put together sensitivity groups and stumbled over pronouns, not after Lindy Oliver went off her meds and threw a chair across the room during Mr. Park’s class discussion about Ethan Frome . There was always somebody doing something more shocking, more outrageous, more interesting. I was completely irrelevant by the time our sophomore year began.
    But I didn’t know that yet, during the last week of summer, and I was tired of not knowing how much to care.
    I put my feet up on my windowsill and dropped Diane’s invitation on the bed beside me.
    â€œWell, she did,” I said. “Are you going?”
    Melanie laughed again. “No way. Don’t you think we’re a little old for pizza and stupid horror movies now?”
    I did, but I went to Diane’s birthday party anyway, mostly because I was angry at Melanie for deciding who among our acquaintances would still want me around and who wouldn’t. Iwrapped up a present in gold and white paper, rang the doorbell, smiled when Diane’s mother answered.
    Mrs. Fordham’s expression was distant and cool. “Diane and the others are