Two Roads by L.M. Augustine Read Free Book Online Page B

now that he’s dead, I can’t bring myself to go to the convention ever again, at least not for a while, because he can’t be the one taking me.
    He can’t ever be the one taking me anymore, and that might be the worst feeling of all.
    “Why not?” Ruby asks.
    I drop my gaze to my feet, not wanting to answer.
    “Ben again?” She knows me too well.
    “Yeah,” I say, my throat tightening.
    Ruby pauses for a moment, still watching me, and then she sighs. “You sure you don’t want to go?”
    “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I am.”
    She presses the pamphlet into my hands, and I hate how crushed she looks--all thanks to me. I have this insane talent for pushing away anyone who tries to get close to me. “Just… think about it, okay? I want you to be happy. And this”--she sweeps her hands around the same dark apartment I’ve spent most of my last week lurking inside--”this is not making you happy, Cali. Deny it all you want, but I know you well enough to tell that it isn’t. So promise me you’ll give the conference some thought?”
    “I promise,” I lie, and then Ruby forces a smile and turns around, walking out of the room.
    ~
    I decide to go out for ice cream, because that’s what normal people do when they’re sad, right? I walk all the way down to some sketchy store at the end of town, order a chocolate ice cream that looks more like a slab of frozen chocolate milk rather than actual ice cream, and collapse into the chair in the corner of the room. My phone beeps several times--all texts from Sarah and Lindsay and company, probably wanting to know all about what I’ve been doing today and whether I met any hot guys and oh, don’t forget how great these new shoes they saw are! I ignore their texts altogether, though. I can’t believe I am idolized by such shallow morons.
    But as I sit in the ice cream shop, I don’t cry. I have no reason to. I just stay there, tired and empty and wishing Ben were here and Logan and I were back to normal again and my parents weren’t so freaking clueless, and for the millionth time, I find myself feeling so, so alone. I’m like this for a long time: sitting in the corner of the restaurant, picking at my failure of a chocolate ice cream and unsuccessfully ignoring the hurt in my heart.
    The ice cream shop is almost completely empty, except for a few Williams University students talking in the middle of the room as well as a grinning little boy and his parents to my left. It’s a tiny store with yellow painted walls and a few drawings by customers hung up on a bulletin board beside me, and it has so much air conditioning on that I think I’m going to freeze despite the one-hundred degree weather outside. An older, gray-haired lady sits in a little stool behind the cash register on the other end of the store, staring boredly at her nails. I try to focus on my ice cream, on the phone on my table, on anything but the fact that I’m alone in an ice cream store and everyone else here looks totally happy except for me.
    Let me make one thing clear: I’m not depressed. Sometimes I think I might be, but I don’t feel sad or anything. I just feel empty, wishing the night Ben died and everyone I cared about broke apart from me never happened. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, so that must mean my constant hoping I can find a way to go back in time and save both Ben and myself fits the bill. So yeah. That’s me. The insane one.
    I stare at my uneaten ice cream for the longest time. I start to wallow, to remind myself what a complete worthless idiot I am, to think about Ben and Logan and my parents and then feel miserable all over again, when my phone beeps an eighth time.
    I decide to take it as a sign that I need to suck it up and move on, so I pull open my inbox, ignoring all the other texts from Lindsay, and sure enough, I have one new email. I force a small smile, because it’s from “The Asshole,” the name in my contacts I made especially