Golden Read Free Page A

how to handle it. I don’t let myself even think about actually reading it; that would be wrong for so many reasons.
    Except.
    It feels like history in a manila envelope. Like something that should be saved. My heart beats a touch quicker.
    Kat would take it in a second if she were here. She wouldn’t even wait to open it. If she were here, I’d be the one to insist we put it back, because that’s what I do. It’s the role I play between the two of us—conscience to her temptations, reason to her impulsiveness. It’s also the role she’s always trying to get me to step out of, just a little. She never stops talking about the idea of pivotal moments in life, tiny ones that can either pass you by or make some big dramatic change somewhere down the line, depending on what you choose to do with them. This feels like one of those moments.
    I know it’s wrong to take it, I do. But something in me decides to do it anyway, and it’s so quick and resolute I don’t have time to change my mind. I know the period’s almost over so I put Julianna’s journal on the bottom of the stack and walk it back over to the table where the box and my backpack sit undisturbed. I smile politely at Ms. Moore when she looks up, and when she goes back to her work, I take a deepbreath and slide the bottom envelope into my backpack, zip it up quick. The bell rings, sealing my decision, and I have to hurry to get the rest of the journals in the box so I can get it back to Mr. Kinney like it’s any normal day and any normal project he’s given me to do. But as I step into the hall with the box in my hands and the stolen journal in my bag, I feel like I’m setting foot down a new road. One I’ve never traveled.

3.
    â€œBut bid life seize the present?
    It lives less in the present
    Than in the future always,
    And less in both together
    Than in the past.”
    â€”“CARPE DIEM,” 1938
    I pull out a red chair with a swirly sun painted on it and sit down with my chai. Try to sound casual. “Do you know where Julianna Farnetti’s family moved away to?”
    Kat gives me a weird look from across the table and leans over her steaming cup. “That’s random. No.” She takes a sip of her mocha and licks the whipped cream off her lips in a way only she can, which makes her new favorite coffeehouse worker smile as he puts his head down and pretends to wipethe table next to us. Since Lane started working a month ago, Kat’s become quite the coffee drinker, if you count white mochas and caramel frappucinos, which I don’t, really. He’s cute in the way most ski bum seasonal employees are—tan face from days spent on the mountain, scruffy, I-don’t-care hair, easygoing smile. Not hard to pull off when you work just enough to pay for a winter of snowboarding and the weed to go with it.
    He’s doing a really great job on that table, but doesn’t say anything, so she doesn’t either. Instead, she pretends to focus on our conversation. “Where did that come from, anyway?” As she asks, her eyes slide past me to follow him across the café to the counter.
    â€œI don’t know,” I shrug. “I was just wondering.” I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to tell Kat what’s in my backpack in the front seat of her car. She’d have to read it as soon as she knew, and I haven’t even made up my mind that I’m going to read it yet. “Something made me think of her and I just . . . wondered where they went.” It’s not a total lie. I did, at one point in the day, decide the right thing to do would be to track down her parents and send the intact envelope to them. But then the thought seemed almost cruel.
    Kat finally brings her eyes back to me. “I don’t think anybody knows where they went. It’s not like they had a whole lot of reason to keep in touch after. They just left