I Am the Wallpaper

I Am the Wallpaper Read Free

Book: I Am the Wallpaper Read Free
Author: Mark Peter Hughes
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Start working up an interest in photography.)
    ** This, of course, may just be wishful thinking, but it’s my birthday, so I can dream, can’t I? (Note to self: Start leaving the Help Wanted section of the newspaper on Lillian’s pillow.)

chapter two: in which
my sister gets married
or
dodging aunt sarah

    Saturday, June 28, 7:10 a.m.
    I am too depressed for words. My sister is getting married today, so I should be enjoying myself, but the following things are ruining it for me:
Wen dumped me.
It’s clear to me now that he never had any idea he was my boyfriend.
The wedding is going ahead even though I have convincing evidence that love doesn’t last and only ends in pain. (See item a.)
For the next three weeks there will be two strange kids, cousins I barely know, in my home, my personal space. Worse, one of them will share my room.
If I don’t find a way to avoid Aunt Sarah today, I may just die of shame.
Frank Sinatra has been looking at me like I’m out of my mind.
He might be right.
    Thank God Rebecca Greenblatt was such a fatty.
    Rebecca, the other bridesmaid, shifted her position, so I shifted mine, too. She was chunky enough that if I kept behind her, I could stay pretty well hidden from about a third of the guests, including Aunt Sarah.
    From the front row of folding chairs, my mother was giving me the evil eye.
Floey
, she mouthed silently,
stop … moving
.
    I fixed my gaze on the main event and pretended not to see her.
    With her veil, tiara and bouquet of white lilies, Lillian looked like a princess. I, on the other hand, clutching my Alice-in-Wonderland bouquet (What flower has big, red, floppy elephant-ear petals? And who, other than my sister, would choose them for her wedding?), felt ridiculous in my bridesmaid gown. It was a horrible pink thing with ruffles and a silly neck, and it looked even worse on than it did hanging in my closet. Anyone who wore this dress should have been blond and waiflike, and I was neither. I felt like a troll in a doily.
    Seeing how happy Lillian and Helmut looked only made me consider how pointless relationships were. I’ve read that half of all marriages end in divorce. Doesn’t that tell you something? In Ma’s case it wasn’t divorce, but I bet when she got married, she never thought her husband would just drop dead and leave her with two daughters, aged ten and two, to raise by herself. Sure, Helmut and Lillian seemed happy now, but how long could it last?
    Then, of course, there was Wen and me.
    For almost three months we’d been working together part-time as Gary’s assistants, going every few days to the photography studio, helping at the front desk and getting the cameras and backgrounds ready. Wen was funny and sweet with me, and eventually I started thinking of us as kind of a unit. At home I talked about him so much that my mother and Lillian asked if he was my boyfriend, and stupidly, I told them he was. At the time, I didn’t think it was a big leap. I thought of him as
practically
my boyfriend already.
    Only I never told him.
    I know that sounds dumb, but I didn’t. I guess I didn’t want him to tell me it wasn’t true.
    And then the bomb dropped. Three days before the wedding, Wen quit the studio, supposedly so he could spend more time on his music. Later that day, Azra saw him holding hands with Kim Swift. Only then did I realize that, incredibly, Wen had no idea how I felt about him. If I hadn’t already been convinced I was invisible, that was all the proof I would have needed.
    I never told my mother or Lillian. What would I have said? That I was dumped from a relationship that had never really existed in the first place? I was too embarrassed.
    As I watched Lillian take her vows, I wondered if Wen and Kim were together now, not thinking about me.
    Oh God! Would I ever be able to stop torturing myself?
    Gary was standing between the minister and the harpist, taking pictures. Every now and then I caught him taking his eye off the wedding to

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