Things I Want to Say by Cyndi Myers Read Free Book Online

giggle that had punctuated every gathering of our childhood.
    In some ways, it seemed I was the only one who hadchanged. All my friends had stayed in our hometown and grown into the lives I’d pictured they would have—marrying, having children, working at Markson’s or other local businesses. I was the only one who’d left the fold.
    I looked at them all as they ate and talked and wondered how they saw me. I was a foreigner now, single and childless. The one with the exotic job in the fantasy world of television and movies. I was no longer the chubby girl who chewed my fingernails or ate every cookie in sight, but I was sure something of the girl I’d been remained in me. Something one of them might recognize—maybe Alice? She had known me the best. Was I a stranger to her now, or still her old friend?
    “I was sorry to hear about your mom,” Scott said when we’d polished off our ribs and chicken and sausage links and had settled into the malaise that only full stomachs and a warm summer afternoon can bring. “I saw the funeral notice in the paper and thought about you and Frannie.”
    “Thank you,” I said, touched that he remembered. “She’d been sick for a while, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected.”
    “I heard later that you and Frannie came back to town for the funeral,” Marsha said. “I would have come to the visitation, but there wasn’t one.”
    “Frannie didn’t want one,” I said. My sister had insisted there was no one in town she wanted to see and that holding a visitation at the funeral home was pointless. “We only stayed a few days. We had a lot to do, going through Mama’s things and arranging the services and everything.”
    “Oh, I understand. But it would have been nice to see you both. It’s been such a long time.” She pushed her empty plate away. “You both left town so suddenly back in high school, we never really got a chance to say goodbye.”
    I shifted on the bench. I’d been hoping no one would bring up my sudden departure, and searched for some way to turn the conversation.
    I didn’t think fast enough, though. “Why did y’all run off like that?” Rachel asked. “None of us could believe it when we heard your mama was still here, but you and Frannie were gone.”
    “Oh, you know how it is when you’re that age,” I said breezily. “Frannie heard of a great job opportunity out West and when she invited me to come along, I thought it would be a fun adventure. I mean, what sixteen-year-old doesn’t want to see Hollywood?” And no, I wasn’t pregnant, I wanted to add, but didn’t.
    After my father died, our house was a sad, tense place and the thought of staying behind without Frannie terrified me. When she’d insisted I come to California with her I’d been only too happy to agree.
    “I really envied you both,” Bill Moreland said from the end of the table.
    I blinked, startled. “You did?”
    “Sure. You were sixteen and you were going off to California with your sister who was only nineteen. No parents. No school if you didn’t want to, nobody to answer to but yourselves.” He grinned. “I would have given my left arm to get away like that.”
    “Frannie made me go to school,” I said, but the rest of it had been true—no parents, and no one to answer to but ourselves. That had been the idea, after all. From my perspective of twenty-two years later, I could see what an audacious idea it had been.
    “I can’t believe your mother let you go,” Rachel said. “Mine certainly wouldn’t have.”
    I tried not to look as self-conscious as I felt. I wasn’t used to being the center of attention like this. When you’re the fat girl, you’re usually more invisible. “She knew Frannie would look after me,” I said. “Plus…she was pretty broken up about my dad. I think she was relieved not to have to worry about the two of us, too.”
    I didn’t remember that Mom had raised any objections at all to us leaving. Or maybe it was only that my