Sophie's Smile: A Novel by Sheena Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

us, but having spent years under an opaque mask suppressed our ability to enjoy its warmth.
    Sometimes, it seemed too easy, too enticing to resist escaping this desolate future. To take my own life. Once in a while, depression overtook my sanity, and I was close…too close…but I controlled the urge to finish what I started when I felt the pain I would be inflicting on my family.
    That pain shielded my depression long enough to make me stop. Long enough for the knife to fall from my shaky fingertips and the thick blood that oozed from the self-inflicted wound to clot and blacken. Long enough to regain composure and hate myself for it—hate myself for being a disappointment.
     
     
    6
     
    Today seemed like one of those bleak days. It was the morning of my twenty-first birthday. I’d been on a hiatus for the past year; dropped out of UC San Diego, got dumped by my girlfriend, quit my job as an intro-level software developer, quit my next job collecting tickets at a museum, then at FedEx, and then 24 Hour Fitness, and now I was just hiding out for a while taking odd jobs for my father whenever he needed an extra hand at the construction site.
    Fall was in the air—crisp and clean. Yellow, red, and orange leaves colored the branches outside my window. October was usually my favorite month of the year, not only because it was my birthday month but also because it held one of my favorite holidays. Halloween was the day you could be anything you wanted. You could be a wrestler, gremlin, or fireman. It was fun, creepy, and scary. There were tricks, treats, and excitement.
    My favorite part as a kid was going with Dad to the pumpkin patch down the street and picking two or three dilapidated pumpkins. The ugly, lumpy pumpkins always worked best for carving the grotesque, grimacing, contorted faces that were not only my trademark, but were an art form I found to be excruciatingly amusing. The last time we went on a pumpkin adventure was the Halloween before the divorce; since then I hadn’t carved a single pumpkin.
    Birthdays were different. Halloween seemed to get better with age but birthdays never were as good as when I was little. When you’re a kid, you get tricked by the excitement of turning a year older, of the showering of presents and love from your family, the piñatas filled with candy, the vanilla cake and marble fudge ice cream, the power you get from feeling special…that all deteriorates when you grow up. Divorce ages a kid. Birthdays now just reminded me of each year I was alone and depressed.
     
    There was a hard knock at the door. As I walked past the kitchen, I noticed a note scribbled on a single napkin that was held in place with a single, white-frosted cupcake.
 
Happy Birthday Bud!
Sorry, I won’t be back to celebrate until late tonight.
Go out and have fun.
Love, Dad.
 
    He always took up extra jobs around the month of October. I think it was his way of avoiding this month altogether, our month. That was okay. I understood. The memories are sometimes too much for me, too.
    “Knock! Knock!” Someone behind the door was becoming impatient. I opened the door without checking the peephole to see who it was (I wasn’t afraid and I didn’t care). To my surprise, Justin Knoxx stood at the doorway. His eyes were cast down, shoulders slouched, his hands in his pockets.
    Sheepishly he said, “Uh…hey…I mean, Happy Birthday.”
    I was surprised, so I just stood there.
    Shuffling his feet, he shifted his weight from his right side to his left. “Um…so I went to John’s and he told me that you guys moved,” shifting again from his left side back to his right, “Can I…come in?” Justin’s eyes were still cast down, tracking the threads of his boots as he scratched out invisible symbols onto the door mat.
    I opened the door wider and stepped aside. I walked toward my room and Justin followed. I sat down on the floor and waited.
    Justin’s eyes scanned the unfamiliar room as he chose to lean