Read Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend for Free Online Page A

room
and flipped out about Vicky, claiming that I didn’t need to expend my “emotional resources” on a grown woman who was
grieving. I knew right away my mother had been reading my
emails, which wasn’t hard for her to do—she’d set up my account for me in middle school, and I’d never changed the password. I’d never thought I needed to.
She doubled our therapy sessions that day.
To be honest, I think my mother was jealous that I’d said more
to Vicky about missing my dad than I’d said to her. That’s probably why I didn’t change my password right away after I found
out she was reading my email. In a way, I sort of liked that she
was jealous.
Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to people you don’t really
know.
When we pull up in front of the Deladdos’ place, it takes exactly one second to figure out which house is Jamie’s. The house
to the left of the Deladdos’ is perfectly maintained and lit up like
the Fourth of July. I can see a TV on the wall and a dog bouncing up and down on the couch, barking and wriggling furiously
as we idle on the street in front of his territory.
The house to the right of the Deladdos’ is small and rundown.
The lawn is scraggly with bald spots where grass refuses to
grow. Brown shutters droop on their hinges and white paint has
peeled off the house and landed in half-dead shrubs, creating a
dirty-snow effect. The gutters are bursting with dead leaves and
branches that look like they’re sprouting from the house itself.
There are no lights on and no one seems to be home.
This is where Jamie lives with his dad.
Jamie turned eighteen this summer. Technically, he doesn’t
have to live here anymore. And considering what his father did
to him when he got arrested, it’s hard to believe that he’d want
to. But I’d be willing to bet that Jamie won’t leave his dad alone
unless he has to.
Jamie can be loyal to a fault.
I wonder what Jamie’s mother would say about his father leaving him in jail overnight.
I saw Jamie’s father from a distance last Thanksgiving at a
restaurant, and he seemed way more interested in the football
game that was on than in talking to Jamie. I don’t know a lot
about him—I know that he’s a cop, and that he went a little
crazy for a while and Jamie actually had to live with the Deladdoses for a few months, which I try not to think about because
it drives me crazy.
But I know even less about Jamie’s mother. Only that she didn’t
live with Jamie and his dad because she was in some kind of institution near Boston. I also know that it was soon after she died
that Jamie got kicked off the hockey team.
Which is when he became one of my mom’s patients.
Yes, I am the very lucky daughter of an adolescent psychologist who is in therapy herself. No wonder I avoid conversation
with her at all costs.
It drives me nuts that my mother knows more about Jamie
than I do. Although, at this point, that would be true of anyone
who actually had a conversation with Jamie this summer—the
cashier at the grocery store, the guys he worked with on the road
crew, his probation officer.
Regina.
“What do you want me to do with this blanket?” Conrad asks,
unbuckling his seat belt. Before Tracy can answer, the Deladdos’ front door opens. A woman looks out at us, her hand hovering over the screen-door handle as if she’s unsure what to do.
She shields her eyes against the glare of the light above her front
steps in order to see us better.
“Shit,” Conrad mutters. He runs his hands through his hair
and looks down at his ruined pants and his red shirt, which now
looks vaguely tie-dyed.
“Just leave it there,” Tracy answers.
Without another word, Conrad gets out of the car, slams the
door too hard and starts up his front walk. As I watch him, he
seems to physically transform, like he’s trying to become invisible. He ducks his head and looks at the ground, pulling his shirt
down as far over his pants as he possibly