Good Girls Don't Read Free Page A

“Emily?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Has Abi ever talked to you about . . . I don’t know, anything that seemed kind of weird?” she asks.
    I frown. “Like what?”
    Sarah looks worried. “Like maybe wanting to kill herself?”
    “She’s not suicidal,” I say. At least, I don’t think she is.
    “Are you sure?” she says. “I’ve been reading this stuff she’s written, and it seems really dark. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m worried. She never talks about what she’s feeling.”
    “Well, she doesn’t talk to me, either,” I tell her.
    “Really? I thought she might have. You’ve been getting kind of close lately.”
    I grin. “That’s one way of putting it.”
    She laughs. “I was trying to be subtle, okay? But seriously . . . I worry about her sometimes.”
    I nod. I think I do too.
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    She was crying because she’d just broken up with her boyfriend. She was rubbing her eyes and tear-stained cheeks and she still looked beautiful, and I took her in my arms and tried to comfort her, and the second I felt her body against mine I knew that I was seriously falling for her.
    ***
    That was the night Hugh and I broke up. That was the night Abi stayed over at my house and I kissed her and then felt horribly guilty about it, because it made us both feel awkward. It didn’t last, though. She didn’t react the way some people would have, disgusted and revolted.
    The second kiss was at my party. We were drunk. It happened. Or rather, she made it happen, and I got annoyed with her for doing it just for the shock value. It reminded me of something Declan would do, but she’s nothing like Declan, not really. Declan is all “Look at me! Look at me! Feel my pain!” and she’s quiet and enigmatic. He demands attention, and she (usually, at least) shies away from it.
    And Declan isn’t that bad, really. I’ve stayed friends with him for the last couple of years, after all. It’s just that sometimes he frustrates me. When he first started talking to me about how depressed he was, I told him to talk to someone who could help him, like a therapist. He said he didn’t need to. I said that if he was depressed then he should, and then he got annoyed with me and didn’t speak to me for a week. This happens again and again, every couple of months. I can’t count the number of times I’ve soothed him out of doing something drastic, and sometimes I wonder why I bother. Am I making any difference? He’s just going to go through this again and again. Maybe I should just ignore him and see what happens, if he’d really go through with it. When it comes down to it, it’s not up to me to fix his life for him. It’s up to him.
    But of course I’ve never tried that out, because I’m not willing to risk it. He knows that, too. Suicide threats are the ultimate in emotional blackmail.
    I think about what Sarah said. I don’t think Abi wants to die. But what would I know? You can’t know a person after just a couple of weeks of semi-deep conversations, even if you’ve been in the same school for years. Maybe you never really know a person, especially one who doesn’t readily discuss what she thinks and feels.
    I really do seem to want to play the role of the saviour, don’t I?
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Barry and I have a Wednesday night tradition. Wednesday is a day when neither of us gets too much homework, so I go over to his house or he comes over here, and we watch a movie. Sometimes some of the others come, too, but Lucy and Andrew are too busy being seriously stressed out about the Leaving Cert being dangerously soon, and Roisín has maths grinds (she is scarily studious sometimes, veering on almost Janet-like), and Hugh has been busy with the band and of course his darling Fiona, so lately it’s just been the two of us.
    It’s a good thing, because I see Roisín at school anyway, and I see everyone at the weekends, and sometimes it’s fun to have one-on-one talks with people.