This Girl: A Novel

breaths, trying to pull herself together before walking into her house. Seeing her effort to move past what just happened so that she can help her mother inside her own home brings it all back into perspective.
    I’m the last thing she needs in her life right now. I have too much responsibility, and with how things are going for her right now, the last thing she needs is to put her life on hold for me. Everything I say or do just brings her more grief and heartache and I can’t ask her to hold on to that while she waits for me. She doesn’t need to focus on me. Julia’s right. She needs to focus on her family.
    I reluctantly walk back into my house and shut the door behind me. The realization that I need to let her go for good physically brings me to my knees.

17.
    the honeymoon
    “I WISH MORE than anything I had gone after you that night,” I say. “I should have told you exactly what I wanted to say. It would have saved us both a world of heartache.”
    Lake sits up on the bed and hugs her knees, looking down at me. “Not me,” she says. “I’m happy things worked out the way they did. I think we both needed that breather. And I definitely don’t regret all the time I spent with my mother during those three months. It was good for us.”
    “Good.” I smile. “That’s the only reason I didn’t run after you.”
    She releases her knees and falls back onto the bed. “But still. It was so hard living across the street from you. All I wanted to do was be with you, but I didn’t want anyone to know that. It’s like I spent the entire three months pretending to be happy when I was in front of other people. Eddie was the only one who knew how I really felt. I didn’t want Mom to know because I felt like it would just burden her even more if she knew how sad I was.”
    I raise up and lean forward, crawling on top of her. “Thank God she knew how we both really felt, though. Do you think you would have showed up at the slam the night before my graduation if she didn’t encourage you to go?”
    “There’s no way I would have shown up. If it weren’t for her telling me about your conversation with her, I would have continued the rest of the year thinking you didn’t love me like I loved you.”
    I press my forehead against hers. “I’m so glad you showed up,” I whisper. “You changed my life forever that night.

schooled
    I’VE SPOKEN TO Lake once in the last three months.
    Once.
    You would think it would get easier, but it hasn’t. Especially today, since my last day of student teaching is finally over. I graduate tomorrow, which should be a day I’m looking forward to more than anything. Instead I’m dreading it, knowing Lake won’t be waiting for me.
    There are two emotions in this world I’ve learned I can handle. Love and hate. Lake has loved me at times and she’s hated me at times. Love and hate, despite their polar opposites, are both feelings that are induced by passion. I can handle that.
    It’s the indifference I don’t know how to process.
    I went to her house a few weeks ago to talk to her about my new job at the junior high and she didn’t seem to care one way or another. I would have taken it well if she had been happy for me and wished me good luck. I would have taken it even better if she had cried and begged me not to do it, which is what I was hoping would happen more than anything. It’s the sole reason I even went to tell her about the job in the first place. I didn’t want to accept it if I thought I still had a chance with her.
    Instead, she didn’t react either way. She congratulated me, but the indifference in her voice was clear. She was simply being polite. Her indifference finally sealed our fate, and I knew in that moment that I had messed with her heart one too many times. She was over me.
    She is over me.
    I have a two-week window in which I’ll be nothing. I won’t be a student. I won’t be a teacher. I’ll be a twenty-one-year-old college graduate. I’ve thought about walking straight over to Lake’s house today to tell her how much I love her, even though I’m technically still a teacher, considering the contract I have with the junior high. Not even that would stop me if it weren’t for the way she reacted to me last month with so much indifference. She seemed to have accepted our fate, and it was good to see her handling everything so well, as much as it hurt. The last thing I want to do, or need to do, is pull her back down with