So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman Read Free Book Online Page A

world, you know,” Wendy said.
    “Uh . . . not really?” Jenny said. “I mean technically? But—”
    “It’s not that big a deal to leave the place you’re from anymore,” Wendy told her. “Everybody does that. It’s more unusual to stay in your hometown—especially if it’s been your family’s hometown for a hundred years.”
    Jenny looked at her pityingly. Wendy knew that the Hollises had lived in Haeden for 150 years, and so did everyone else, because of Hollis Road. And they had no problem coming and going. Of course they didn’t. Wendy suddenly felt like she might laugh out loud because smart, earnest Jenny didn’t realize the conversation they were having was about money.
    At times like these, Wendy liked her family more than ever. But there was no way to say so without seeming uncool or poor or insecure. And then when she got home, she kind of couldn’t stand them again.
    It wasn’t just Jenny or her parents or nieces who were wearing on her. She was beginning to talk back to people in her head and answer their questions in a funny way to herself. She knew her mother noticed. One time at dinner, her nieces and sister-in-law, Beth Ann, were visiting and being so loud, and her mother looked up at her with such a funny smile that Wendy thought she could read her mind. That they were making the same silentjokes. Maybe her mom and all her aunts had always done this. Maybe she was only just starting to catch up to them.
    Sometimes, out walking on Sunday with the girls and Beth Ann, Wendy had the urge to throw all her things in the river. All her things—her purse, her schoolbooks, her stupid jewelry, her shoes—she wanted to stand there at the bridge and drop everything, watch it go by in the current until she was free, not free of Haeden but of some person Haeden expected her to be and that she hadn’t been strong enough to resist.
    Things got better in the fall when people left for college. Wendy missed them at first, even Jenny, but most of her girlfriends went to schools nearby, and she could visit them if she wasn’t working on the weekends. She didn’t like the dorms, which seemed trashy, and the hallways were too narrow. The campuses all looked the same: concrete buildings, mazes of parking lots and walkways. She liked it better when her friends visited home and stayed at her place, and they would go shopping, stay up late watching movies or drive into Elmville to go dancing. And it felt like her town now. She knew everyone, not only her friends’ parents and her parents’ friends—she knew all the working people. Liked the working people. Her friends only knew each other.
    There were some boys from her class who had taken jobs in Haeden or Elmville, or lived at home helping their fathers out while they figured out what they wanted to do. But the girls didn’t. The girls always left.
    A lot of guys who stayed had plans to build nearby. Two of the boys she went to school with were going to “live off the grid” on some land left by somebody’s grandfather. They said soon everyone would be living off the grid. This made her dad laugh out loud every time she told him about it. They were making a straw-bale house, said they would put up a windmill. Her father said it was all just making a big deal out of the way things usedto be back before construction got easier. The only people who could afford the houses were rich people, he said. That’s the joke! Next rich people will want to live in a cave. They’re already paying four dollars a half gallon for unpasteurized milk!
    Some boys from her class went to Iraq or Afghanistan. Her dad said more people from rural places like Haeden were fighting in the war than people from cities. Said it was always like that for farm boys and working boys. And he told her don’t ever date those boys when they come back. On slow days, she and her dad would sit in the office and talk, tell stories about her nieces, and think about what the future would be like.