The Worst Thing I've Done by Ursula Hegi Read Free Book Online

about how much I used to cry. Constantly, he said.” Mason laughed. “To give him and my mom some quiet time, he’d put me into my carriage, wheel me into that garage behind our house, and leave me there for a couple of hours. By the time he’d get back, I’d be all cried out and asleep.”
    â€œJesus Christ,” I said. “Why are you laughing?”
    â€œI remember my dad laughing whenever he told that story…and I’d be laughing with the grown-ups.”
    â€œYour mom too?” Jake asked.
    â€œI…think so.”
    Jake rubbed his chin. “They thought it was funny?”
    â€œMust have. He certainly told that story often enough.”
    â€œNo wonder you don’t let Opal cry.” Jake laid one hand on Mason’s shoulder.
    But I didn’t. Because I felt uneasy. Was this just another one of Mason’s games to hold Jake here by making him feel sorry for him?
    â€œThere’s no reason to let a baby cry,” Jake said.

    T HE MORNING of our first anniversaries—my parents’ death, Opal’s birthday, and our wedding—I was the one who woke screaming.
    â€œSshhh, Annie…” Mason wrapped his long, bony arms and legs around me, angular where I was soft, not enough width of him to envelop all of me, though he tried, as if he believed that could stop my shivering.
    That Annabelle is too big for a girl.
    â€œSshhh—”
    I held on. Tight. Both of us shivering.
    In first grade, I’d bullied the boys who bullied Mason. He was small, then—still years away from his astonishing growth spurt—and when other boys shoved or tripped him, I’d run at them, windmill arms and yelling so the teacher would hear me, slugging them if they didn’t flee.
    Mason’s father said it should have been reversed: “That Annabelle is too big for a girl. A girl like that makes a boy look even shorter.”
    Only it never bothered Mason and me. So close we were, so wondrously close—a girl-boy being, the best of both in one. And it was like that with Jake, too. From childhood on, I believed I was linked to both: one to marry; the other my friend. Not sure which. Yet. But I didn’t mind not knowing because I loved them both, loved how they gravitated toward me while I kept their friendship in balance. That thought alone was seductive…how I could do this for them.
    My first kiss: Jake when we were twelve. Snow in our hair. Snow to our ankles behind the school.
    We never told Mason, because he would have been devastated. Jake knew. I knew.
    And we both knew that, one day in Morocco, on the walls of Asilah, I wanted him more than Mason. That pull between Jake and me was always strong, just as it was with Mason. More so, at times. But we stayed apart, Jake and I, in that way at least, far enough apart…a flux of retreating and advancing.

    M ASON BROUGHT his lips to my ear. Whispered.
    â€œWhat? That tickles.”
    â€œI have an outrageous idea.”
    â€œOh?” Being outrageous had drawn Mason and me together from the time we were kids and had chased cars to make them stop for our lemonade sale. Outrageous meant being daring. And the shock of saying anything. Outrageous meant traveling through Morocco right after high school graduation. Mason’s parents insisted Jake come with us—“He’s so mature,” they said—but Jake didn’t want to be our chaperone…only came along because he loved us both, still loved us both, then, before he loved only me and came to fear Mason.
    â€œYou like outrageous,” Mason reminded me.
    I held him as he whispered, our bodies sweaty where they touched. “Let me get the camera, Annie.”
    â€œNo way.”
    â€œIt would be so outrageous.” Black tousled hair, black eyebrows.
    â€œIt would be disrespectful.”
    â€œThat’s why your mother would be the first to laugh.”
    Sudden sorrow— her hand on my waist,