Read Lies My Girlfriend Told Me Online
Authors: Julie Anne Peters
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance, #Social Issues, #Homosexuality, #Mysteries & Detective Stories
Lies My Girlfriend Told Me
Digital Galley Edition
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Pretend You Love Me
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It’s Our Prom (So Deal With It)
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Julie Anne Peters
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected] Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First Edition: June 2014
[CIP to come]
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Printed in the United States of America
Contents
This is dedicated to the ones I love
An earthquake shakes the ground beneath me and I swim to consciousness, grasping for a handhold. Mom’s voice slithers into my dream state. “Alix? Honey?”
My eyelids flutter open to the faint light of dawn peeking through my window shade. “Alix?” she repeats.
I roll over and the clock comes into focus: 6:08. The alarm is set to go off in seven minutes. Why is she waking me?
A shadow looms in my doorway. Dad. Mom’s sitting on the bed beside me. I get this sense of unease and push myself up on my elbows. “What’s wrong?”
Mom takes my hand in both of hers. “There’s been an accident.” She glances over her shoulder at Dad. To me she goes, “A tragedy.”
My stomach drops. “Is it Ethan?”
“No. Ethan’s fine,” Mom says.
I expel a sigh of relief. Over Christmas, right after he turned five months old, he came down with whooping cough. It was
serious enough that Mom checked him into the hospital for two nights.
Dad comes into my room and sits at the end of my bed, rubbing my exposed ankle. It’s weird. He rarely touches me.
“It’s Swanee,” Mom says. “She was out running this morning and collapsed. By the time anyone found her, she was gone.”
“Gone?” What does that mean?
“She had a sudden cardiac arrest,” Mom answers. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” I say.
Mom presses my hand between hers. “There’s nothing anyone could’ve done.”
“I could’ve. I know CPR. You taught me.”
She shakes her head. “A friend of mine in med school died of the same thing. He was playing soccer, not even running, just standing there waiting for the ball when his heart gave out. He was given CPR on the spot, but it was already too late.”
“No.” I hear my disembodied voice. “No, no, no.”
Mom pulls me up and holds me, and then the screaming crescendos in my head: NO NO NO NO NO.
I have to see Swan. Get to her house and talk to her. I need to hold her, feel her lips on mine, her desire pulse through me.
Today’s the day I’m going to tell her that I’m ready. She’s been so patient with me while I’ve worked through my fear. It frustrated her. I know that. But now I’m ready to take our relationship to the next level. “No more waiting,” I’ll whisper in her ear as soon as I see her.
My head is clouded and my mouth feels stuffed with cotton balls. Mom and Dad are gone from my room, so I drag myself out of bed and stagger to the bathroom. Unexpectedly, I hurl. Nothing in my stomach. I dry heave three more times.
I feel so weak I can barely hold my toothbrush, but somehow I manage to brush my teeth and start the shower. Standing under the massaging spray, I feel better. More alert.
I dress in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and then grab my bag and Dad’s car keys to drive to Swan’s house. Mom’s body barricades the door to the garage. “Where are you going?”
“To Swanee’s. We’re snowboarding at Keystone today. I told you.” I told her last weekend. It’s already February, and we’ve only been to the slopes three times this year. The first time during winter break, when Swanee and I met and officially became a couple.
“Honey, Swanee’s gone. And today is Sunday.”
Sunday? No, it’s Saturday. “I’m late. We wanted to get an early start so we could get there before the lift lines got too long. I’ll ask Jewell and Asher to follow me back to the house so I can drop off Dad’s car, since they’re coming, too—”
Mom clutches my arm. “Jewell and Asher need to make funeral arrangements. You can’t go over there.”
I push Mom away, hard. “Yes, I can.” She catches her foot on a mud rug and stumbles backward into the washing machine.
“Alixandra!” She chases me to the garage, favoring the ankle she twisted when she tripped. “You’re not going. They need to be with family now.”
“I
am
family!” I yell. A dizzy spell makes me brace myself against Dad’s Prius.
“You’re in no shape to drive,” Mom says. “Give me the keys.”
Then it dawns on me. “You drugged me.” I whirl on her and the vertigo makes my head spin. “You drugged me, didn’t you?”
“I gave you a mild sedative, yes.”
She drugged me because she knew what I was going to tell Swanee today. I don’t know how, but she knew.
“Swanee is dead.” Mom clutches both my arms. “She’s gone, Alix. She died yesterday morning.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Mom looks hurt. “I’d never lie to you.”
The statement makes me reel, considering all the lies I’ve told her lately.
My right hand is trembling, but I manage to get the key in the lock and open the door.
Mom blocks me from getting in.
“I have to go!” I shout at her. My voice lowers a notch. “I
have
to.”
She gazes into my eyes. “You can’t drive. You can hardly stand, and you don’t even have shoes on.”
I peer down and see she’s right.
“Do you have your cell?” Mom asks.
My cell? Why? Is she going to take it away? Last month I overspent my text minutes, but what did Mom and Dad expect? I have a girlfriend now. We need to communicate.
She holds out her hand and I dig around in my bag for the phone. She plucks it from my palm and dials a number,
looking at me while she waits for an answer. My toes curl under on the cold concrete.
What’s the date? Swan’s first track meet isn’t until March, but she’s been preparing all year.
Run. She’s a runner. She’s tall and lean, not an ounce of body fat. I feel like a blob next to her. Swanee has a good chance of winning the 5A title again this year for Arvada. She has six offers on the table from the top track-and-field colleges. She doesn’t want to go out of state and leave me behind, but I told her she has to follow her dream. So she signed with Arizona State. It’s going to be hard carrying on a long-distance relationship for a whole year. We can do it, though. Until I get to Arizona, our love will see us through.
Mom’s talking to me.
“What?”
“Give me the keys.”
I fist them behind my back.
She says, “Jewell wants to see you. But please, Alix, show respect. She has to make arrangements for Swanee.”
No. Jewell will greet me at the door like always. “Hi, Alix.” She’ll hold the door wide open for me. “Wassup, girlfriend?”
And I’ll tell her. She might make a cappuccino for me and sit at the kitchen table to shoot the breeze. She’s so great. Eventually, she’ll say, “Swan’s in her room. Go on in.” She’s fine with me being in Swanee’s room with the door closed. Swanee even said it’d be fine if I stayed over. My first thought was, How many girls have stayed over? But it was none of my business. I knew she wasn’t a virgin, like me.
My mom would never let Swanee spend the night.
Horrors. We can’t even be in my room together with the door closed. My parents are such prudes.
Mom stands there with her palm open, waiting for me to give up the keys. It’s useless trying to hold my ground. I hand over the keys and she says, “Go put your boots on.”
In the mudroom, I slip my numb feet into my boots.
It’s snowing. When did it start to snow? Swanee hates it when the weather is crappy. It’s enough to compete, she says, without having to freeze your ass off in snow or rain or freezing drizzle.
I know the route to the Durbins’ by heart and direct Mom there.
In front of Swanee’s house and around the cul-de-sac, there are ten or twelve cars parked. Mom pulls in behind Derek’s van. Not Derek anymore. He wants to be known as Genjko. What a weirdo.
Mom says, “We’ll just stay long enough to pay our respects, and then leave.”
I race to the door. The thought of seeing Swan, of feeling the charge of electricity when our eyes meet and she smiles her love.