The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen Read Free Book Online

were, what records I'd planned to break just days before. There was one time I would never beat, so I quit.
    By altering the familiar route that took me past the intersection of Willow and McKinley whenever I went out, and loop-ing one extra block instead, I'd been able to avoid the place where everything had happened: it was that easy, really, to never drive past it again. My friends from the track team were a bit harder. They'd stuck close to me, loyal, at the funeral and the days afterwards, and while they were disappointed when the coach told them I'd quit, they were even more hurt when I started to avoid them in the halls. Nobody seemed to understand that the only person I could count on not to bring up my dad, not to feel sorry for me, or make The Face—other than my mother—was me. So I narrowed my world, cutting out everyone who'd known me or who tried to befriend me. It was the only thing I knew to do.
    I packed up all my trophies and ribbons, piling them neatly into boxes. It was like that part of my life, my running life, was just gone. It was almost too easy, for something I once thought had meant everything.
    So now I only ran in my dreams. In them, there was always something awful about to happen, or there was something I'd forgotten, and my legs felt like jelly, not strong enough to hold me. Whatever else varied, the ending was the same, a finish line I could never reach, no matter how many miles I put behind me.
     
    "Oh, right." Bethany looked up at me through her slim, wire-framed glasses. "You're starting today."
    I just stood there, holding my purse, suddenly entirely too aware of the nail I'd broken as I unfastened my seat belt in the parking lot. I'd put so much time into getting dressed for this first day, ironing my shirt, making my hair part perfectly straight, redoing my lipstick twice. Now, though, my nail, ripped across the top, jagged, seemed to defeat everything, even as I tucked it into my palm, hiding it.
    Bethany pushed back her chair and stood up. "You can sit on the end, I guess," she said, reaching over to unlatch the knee-high door between us and holding it open as I stepped through. "Not in the red chair, that's Amanda's. The one next to it."
    "Thanks," I said. I walked over, pulling the chair from the desk, then sat down, stowing my purse at my feet. A second later I heard the door squeak open again and Amanda, Bethany's best friend and the student council secretary, came in. She was a tall girl with long hair she always wore in a neat braid that hung halfway down her back. It looked so perfect that during long meetings, when my mind wandered from the official agenda, I'd sometimes wondered if she slept in it, or if it was like a clip-on tie, easily removed at the end of the day.
    "Hello Macy," she said coolly, taking a seat in her red chair. She had perfect posture, shoulders back, chin up. Maybe the braid helped, I thought. "I forgot you were starting today."
    "Um, yeah," I said. They both looked at me, and I was distinctly aware of that
urn
, so base, hanging in the air between us. I said, more clearly, "Yes."
    If I was working toward perfect—working being the operative word—these girls had already reached it and made maintaining it look effortless. Bethany was a redhead with short hair she wore tucked behind her ears, and had small freckled hands with the nails cut straight across. I'd sat beside her in English, and had always been transfixed when I saw her taking notes: her print was like a typewriter, each letter exact. She was quiet and always composed, while Amanda was more talkative, with a cultured accent she'd picked up from her early years in Paris, where her family had lived while her father did graduate work at the Sorbonne. I'd never seen either of them sporting a shirt with a stain on it, or even a wrinkle. They never used anything but proper English. They were the female Jasons.
    "Well, it's been really slow so far this summer," Amanda said to me now, smoothing her