Strange but True by John Searles Read Free Book Online

reason, she kisses the page before closing and locking the book, then burying it back beneath her underwear and socks. When she leaves the bedroom and goes to the top of the stairs, Melissa pauses and looks down. Ronnie, Chaz, and Stacy are on the other side of the living room, so she can’t see them from here. Only the full moon of her father’s bald spot and the yellow puff of her mother’s hair are in view. Something about their waxy, creaseless faces and neat clothing has been bugging Melissa lately. She wishes they’d get a few more wrinkles on their faces and their clothes, the way normal parents do. Her mother is quiet, like she always is around her father. His deep, dry voice drones on as he lectures about the rules of the evening while jangling the change in his pocket, fishing up the coins, then sifting them between his fingers.
    At first, it is hard for her to make out the words. She hears him say the obvious things: “no alcohol … home before midnight…” Then something, something, something, and the subject changes. “… track meets before graduation … you think you’ll be able to break your shot put record?”
    â€œI intend to, sir,” Chaz says in response, pulling off the gentleman routine better than Melissa would have guessed.
    â€œChaz is the only one in the history of Radnor High School ever to throw more than nineteen meters,” Stacy says.
    Melissa knows Ronnie must be bored out of his skull by this discussion, since they’ve already been subjected to Stacy and Chaz’s verbal diarrhea about his dumb shot put record. When Melissa descends the staircase to save him, Ronnie looks so good standing there in his tuxedo over by the white brick fireplace that a new kind of aching fills her. It feels as though someone has pumped too much blood into her body and it is seeping out her pores into the air, making everything around her glow red just like in the darkroom.
    â€œYou look lovely, dear,” her mother says, lifting her disposable camera to snap a picture.
    â€œJust gorgeous,” her father tells her in the fake, jovial voice he puts on in front of company or in the reception area at church.
    Melissa glances at the weapon of his thin brown belt, then looks away toward Ronnie to stop the roiling in her stomach. “So what do you think?” she asks, looking down at her dress. “Do you like it?”
    Ronnie licks his lips and smiles. “Like it? I love it. You look beautiful.”
    Even though she tries not to, all Melissa can think about is kissing him, pressing her body to him, feeling him go hard in his pants as he pushes and pushes and pushes against her … until, for the first time tonight, he will push himself inside of her.
    â€œWhy don’t you put the corsage on Missy before we take a picture of the two of you over by the fireplace?” her mother says.
    Ronnie steps closer, bringing a wave of body heat as he does. His thick fingers pull the roses out of the plastic box, and she holds her wrist in front of her rapidly beating heart. As he slips the lace band over her hand, Melissa hears the sound of her father fishing up the contents of his pockets and sifting it through his fingers. Although she can’t see it there among the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, she knows he is carrying the spare silver key to her diary—the one that went missing months ago. She knows too that he will unlock it and read her most recent entry not long after they leave this house tonight. But by the time he begins to suspect that everything she has written inside is a lie, Melissa will be miles away from Radnor, on her way to someplace secret, where he won’t be able to find her until she is ready to come home.
    When Ronnie finishes securing the tight fist of roses to her wrist, he gives her hand a gentle squeeze and asks, “Are you ready?”
    â€œI’m ready all right,” she tells him.