All You Never Wanted Read Free

helps. It makes her smile. Thea is shrewd at figuring out what you want to hear and delivering it tied up in pink ribbons.
    Her sister is a natural storyteller. Always was. But she’s been getting so brazen with her lies. Alex knows, with a prickling, back-of-the-brain dread, that she should intervene. Sit Thea down and talk this mess out. A sisterly act. Because nobody else can get inside Thea’s head. Not like she can.
    But now’s not the time. Not when Thea’s being her best self, singing her heart out. As if to prove to Alex that life is a breeze, a country drive, a catchy pop hit on a loop.
    Old Field Post Road is nothing but fencing, meadows, and the picturesque barns that are photographed for coffee-table books. High-culture cow country, with no view of the mansions from the road.
    Alex keeps a grip on the wheel.
    Then Thea is gone. Leaping free at the red light on the first intersection without even a goodbye.
    Okay​but​I​don’t​need​her. Doing​just​fine​just​me
.
    Except she needs her. In some ways, Thea’s got what Alex craves most. Because Thea gets the big picture. Even when they were kids, Thea was the girl who did whatever it took to win the prize. Even if she was working for different prizes now. She’d stopped being “good.” She didn’t bother with the honor roll anymore. Had quit varsity field hockey after she broke her finger. (“Why do I care about a fancy college?” she’d said once. “Arthur can buy me college. Maybe I’ll ask him for Yale.”)
    But now that Thea’s gone, the dread is a thousand flashing knives aimed so sharp that Alex can’t even speak to call for help. The road, the passing scenery, are hallucinatory. She makes it to the train-station parking lot on a crawl of sweat.
    Where she cuts the engine and stares at her phone. Joshua? No. Don’t. He’s probably still irritated about what she did at the movies last night. Jumping out of her seat. Climbing over bodies, whispering
Excuse me
’s. Scurrying from the darkened theater.
    He’d followed her and stood by the restroom and waited for her. When she’d come out, his face had been erased of expression. “Baby, I don’t care how the movie ends. Let’s go home. We’ll make popcorn and watch On Demand, and it’ll be better than being out.”
    Yeah, sure.
    Hunched in the twilight, the phone frozen in her hand, she feels a sudden mild but familiar cramping. No, impossible. She doesn’t even carry anything in her purse anymore. But yes. It is that. Still she doesn’t move. Allows the pain to roll in like a slowtide. Watches the trains pull in and depart. She might be stuck here all night. “Girlfriend” is a taunt knocking in her head.
    Minutes pass. She is a shadow. She feels the cramps tightening and relaxing and tightening again, stronger. Twenty miles away, a gangly boy is gathering up his homework and shoving his books into his frayed nylon backpack. Checking the wall clock one last time before he stands up and snaps off the light.
    Alex tries not to think about it, and it’s all she can think about.

Thursday, evening
THEA
    But back to the jealousy. Since I swear I’d never been jealous of Alex before. In all honesty, I’d spent most of my life being proud-by-association of her, and savoring her fuss over my whatever “talents,” like hockey and English.
    So when envy found me, it took me by surprise. A kiddy fury, like getting playground-pranked. Remember those? Call it one part Indian rug burn, one part nipple cripple, one part Hertz doughnut.
Hurts, don’t it?
Some boy gave me a Hertz doughnut, in second grade. Right on the top of my thigh. Troy DiBruno. Kids said it was because he liked me. If that was true, the big purple bruise he left was my only evidence.
    Joshua Lee Gunner was the name of my new bruise. He’d been going out with Alex since last October and he was now in our kitchen, snarfing up dinner from a plate in his hands. Too hungry to use a fork. As I watched him, he