Take Me There Read Free

sad. Especially when you thought you’d have a boyfriend to do couple things with for the rest of junior year. And maybe even longer if Steve came back from college to take me to the prom and stuff. Before The Incident, this year felt like it was going by really fast. Now it’s taking forever, even though we only have four more weeks left.
    I’m itching to check my voice mail, but James made me leave my cell at home. He knew that if I brought it with me, I’d be checking to see if Steve called like every three seconds.
    “Hey, Ree,” Nicole says, suddenly here. She hugs me.
    I hug her back, clinging to her like Velcro. Nicole is the type of person that’s great in a crisis. She can figure out your problem before you’re even done explaining it. And she always knows exactly what to say to make you feel better.
    “Are you okay?” Nicole is worried about me. She knows it’s too soon to be over it. She knows I think about him all the time.
    “Yeah,” I say. “I mean . . . no. You know.”
    She knows. She’s been here.
    Nicole bites her lip. “If it makes you feel better, we can go over it again.”
    That’s another thing about Nicole. She comes off all wild like with how she dresses, but she’s not really like that. She’s actually super sensitive and sweet.
    But still. It must take an enormous amount of strength for her to say that. We’ve analyzed the whole thing to the point of exhaustion, until there’s nothing left to say. But why he dumped me is the most annoying unsolved mystery ever. So of course I want to go over everything he said for the millionth time.
    I’m like, “Only if it’s truly okay with you and you’re not just saying that because you feel sorry for me because—”
    “It’s okay.”
    “So . . . well, at first he seemed the same as always . . .”
    The whole thing was so strange. The entire four months we were going out, I thought we had this amazing connection, right from the start. No, I knew we did.
    But then.

    “I, um . . . I don’t think we should go out anymore.”
    “What?” He couldn’t be serious. There was no way. “What are you talking about?”
    “I just don’t feel it anymore,” Steve said. All casual. As if he was saying, “I don’t feel like going to the park.”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How can you not know?” I kept expecting the joke to be over.
    Steve just shook his head, looking at the floor.
    “What happened?” I said. My eyes filled with tears.
    “Nothing. I just . . . I’m leaving for college anyway, so—”
    “But that’s not until August!”
    “Yeah, but . . .”
    “So that’s why?” I wiped my cheek. “I thought you said you wanted to try a long-distance relationship.”
    “Look. I know this is hard to hear, but . . . I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
    I watched Steve. He didn’t even look sad. How was that possible? This is a boy who said he loved me. Who stayed in my room all day when I was sick, playing cards and making me smoothies in the blender, even though he didn’t know how and the blender got jammed. The same boy who put his hands all over my body, kissed me for hours . . .
    And then suddenly it was over. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
    I cried harder.
    Steve got up.
    “Where are you going?” You could hear how scared I was. I was like, This is it. He’s leaving already. He can’t even stand to be in the same room with me. I’m that repulsive.
    Steve sat back down on the couch with the tissue box. He held one out.
    “Here,” he said.
    I wiped my nose. “Do you still love me?”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “Then why are you doing this?”
    “It’s not you. It’s me. I’m . . .”
    “You’re what?”
    “I just have to do this, is all.”
    “But I still love you.”
    Steve cracked his knuckles. I always hated when he did that, but now I would give anything to be back together with him. If he would just take it all back, he could crack his knuckles all he