This May Sound Crazy Read Free Page B

were the people I wanted to be with.
    Summer and Joel ran into a frozen yogurt shop and told Adam and me to wait outside. I was, like, whaaa . . . until I realized why. Twenty seconds later, Adam kissed me. It wasn’t so much that there were “fireworks” or whatever. More like I was hit by a train. Cupid laid me out, big-time.
    The four of us spent the rest of the evening wandering the city before stopping to get tea. Because as stated previously, I was stillonly seventeen, which is still NOT the legal drinking age in London. So, my after-dinner drink was peppermint tea. The rest of my time there was spent walking through London, taking endless amounts of pictures and sharing secrets with the three of them that I have never shared with anyone else. Summer and I refer to this time as Wonderland. It was only two weeks of all four of us being there, but it felt like the world had slowed down and we had been together there for years.
    We had fallen down the rabbit hole and landed on our heads and everything was upside down in the best way. I was so in love and in awe of these people. It all seemed so ideal and beautiful; I thought I was dreaming for most of it.
    But I wasn’t.
    It was real.
    IT HAPPENED.
    For my eighteenth birthday, they took me to a club.
    We spent most of the night being the lamest people in the club sitting at the table, drinking champagne (totally legal now in London!) and talking about our feelings. Lame? Maybe. But to us it was perfect.
    Adam got up to use the restroom and Summer went to get another drink. Joel slid over next to me, put his arm around me, and whisper-shouted over “Talk Dirty to Me” (such a sentimental romantic song):
    â€œWe are gonna
remember this for
the rest of our lives.”
    It sounds cheesy, but it was true.
    That night was still, in my opinion, the besttime of my life so far.
    Yes. So far.
    I look back on it wishing I could go back there, knowing how awesome it was. But I think what made it so good was that I didn’t see it coming.
    I miss it. I miss that time. Not just the weeks I was there with all of them, but the weeks leading up to it and the weeks after. The whole five months when we were the most important people in each other’s lives. I mean, think about how crazy it was: My best friend up and moves her life to London, falls madly in love with a British boy, introduces me to the British boy’s best friend, WE fall in love, I randomly go to London for weeks to be with them, we have the most amazing time of our lives, and then just as quickly as it all began, it all ended. Summer flew back to theStates the same day I left London. I still don’t know exactly why Summer left when she did. I know she says now it’s just because she was sad, but I wish I had known then what made her leave. She and Joel planned to stay together, but they wound up breaking up a month later. And what it all showed me was that everything that happened was because of the four of us. Specifically us. You couldn’t re-create that time with other people. One missing piece, and the whole thing comes crashing down.
    So I know how hard it can be to let go of the past and move on when you don’t feel like you’ll ever have something that amazing again. But as Summer said to me today, “You were Alice and that was your Wonderland. But Alice had many stories. You just need to find a new Wonderland.”
    So I will.

    I will.

4
HOW TO BE FRIENDS WITH BOTH PEOPLE IN A BREAKUP

    Let me set up a visual for you.
    I’ve just gotten back home from a “lunch.” Like, one of those actual lunches that came about because someone said, “Let’s do lunch.” Like, that’s a thing . . . Like, that actually happens.
    ANYWAY . . .
    I came home, immediately got into my pajamas (my brother says I hold the world record for quickest changer into pajamas), and checked my phone. Ten text messages from my friend Summer.
    I’m busy