Unforgivable by Amy Reed Read Free Book Online

the Berkeley hills surround us. On the other side of this patch of forest, people are golfing and hiking and having picnics. They can probably hear the guns going off. If a deer walked into the shooting range, I wonder if we’d be allowed to shoot it.
    As Dad shows us the boring stuff—how to clean the gun, how to load it, how the safety works—I try to ignore David sulking beside me. He’s like a sponge, sucking out my joy and excitement. When it’s finally time to shoot, I feel strangely sad. This day is nothing like I’d hoped it would be.
    I’m a terrible shot. I had imagined myself as some kind of action hero in a flashy movie, but I’m a kid in a run-down old shooting range who, after several rounds, only hits the target once, on the very edge of the paper.
    After everyone’s done shooting, the ranger announces the cease-fire and I walk down the lane to replace the target I hit. I roll up the piece of paper with one tiny hole in it, careful not to get any creases in it. I will put it in the box where I keep my most treasured possessions. When I return, Dad looks at hiswatch. “Time’s almost up,” he says. “One last chance, David.”
    David sits there for a while, silent and still, in his own little world. I load the gun for myself, expecting David to keep pouting until it’s time to leave.
    But then he stands up. He says, “Okay.” He walks over to me and pulls the loaded gun out of my hand. He turns to face the target. He raises the gun, aims, and shoots the six bullets in quick succession. They all hit the target, one just shy of a bull’s-eye.
    â€œWow,” I say.
    â€œHa!” Dad exclaims with joy. He pounds David on the back with fatherly pride. “That’s my kid genius. That’s my big man.”
    David winces and says nothing. I’ve never seen him look so small.

you.
    YOU HADN’T SEEN ME YET. I WAS SURE THE LOUD RUMBLING of my car’s diesel engine would give me away, but you were in your own world, looking up at the sky like you didn’t quite trust it. I thought, How is it possible for one face to tell so many stories and at the same time divulge nothing? You were a beautiful mystery I wanted to solve.
    I parked my car at the corner. I whispered, “Look at me,” and even though it was impossible that you heard me, you turned and looked me straight in the eyes. Like you knew exactly where my eyes were, these two gray-green pinpricks in the distance, like magnets. In that moment, my suspicions were confirmed: we were connected on a level that betrayed all laws of space and time and sound.
    We had barely kissed yet, but when you got into the car, I wanted to inhale you, I wanted to taste every piece of you. It wasn’t just a sex thing, wasn’t just my body’s hunger for yours.I wanted to know you with every single one of my senses. I wanted inside. I wanted everything. I wanted your molecules.
    It shocked me that you existed in the same world as other girls I’ve known. You were nothing like the prep school girls I met at Templeton parties, those girls with the swishing ponytails and easy laughs, their eyes warmed with vodka and entitlement as they curled up against me. You were nothing like the hipster girls I met at music shows, those spindly-armed poets who drank cheap beer as proof of their authenticity, who caressed my skin and laughed ironically about how white they were, who called me beautiful as if I were some kind of exotic art piece. You were something else entirely. Your identity was not theoretical, not a performance, not a role. You were the real deal.
    Your beauty was transcendent. The sky spun in your eyes. Maybe because you had tasted death and brought a little of it back with you, maybe because you had brushed hands with God, you looked and felt and tasted like heaven.
    And now this hell. Life without you. A vacuum, a black hole.

here.
    I KEEP PICTURING EVIE IN THE