Read Now She's Gone: A Novel for Free Online

out, so be it. She gave me no choice in the matter.
    I picked it back up.
     
    “Oh, Dr. Sweeney wanted to read my journal. But I decided not to see her anymore. She seems nice but this journal thing is helping me more than sitting in her office for an hour. Besides, I couldn’t get the nerve to tell her why I was really there. I don’t even know what it is. It’s just this little thing that comes up every once in a while to torture me. I live through it and hope it doesn’t return. It always does.”
     
    What the hell was she talking about?
     
    “Back to the good stuff.
    So, me and Wayne sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g. And this boy could suck face, just let me tell you. Damn. He was one of the best kissers, but I might think that cause he was the first guy that I ever actually kissed. With tongue, I mean. Before Wayne, I was one-hundred percent virgin. I wouldn’t even touch myself!
    The only problem with Wayne was he was just so shy. So backwards. Okay, that’s what everyone thought about him but once we were alone, he turned into this wild man. He was always all over me and I couldn’t keep him off. He always wanted to kiss and touch and do all that great stuff, but like I said, I was a little prig and I knew if my mother found out, my ass would have been grass.
    And, yeah, I wanted him as much as he wanted me. But because of my mother, we had to pretend we weren’t seeing each other. I had offhandedly mentioned him one day and she snapped, ‘You better not be seeing that boy! Or any boy! You have to go to college!’
    So, that was that.
    But Wayne. God, I was so in love with this dude I could have eaten him alive. Every single inch of him. And I wanted to have sex with him, too. But I wouldn’t let him do that. I was so scared Mom would find out and kill me. She was terrified I’d get knocked up and would give me nightly lectures on teen pregnancy and the proverbial, ‘Don’t end up like me!’
    But I wasn’t listening to her. I mean, come on. My teenage hormones were in overdrive and when you’ve got some guy like Wayne who is just oozing this intense sexuality, something is gonna happen. And, oh yeah, he oozed it. Ooze is another weird word. Like he had sores or something. He didn’t have sores.
    This went on for about a year or so and I am more than sure poor Wayne had blue balls the size of a… I dunno. Something really large. Tractor tires, maybe?
    Even though he wasn’t ‘popular,’ I’d see all the girls checking his ass out in the halls. Of course, I didn’t notice this before I started seeing him, but afterwards I was like, What the hell…? Chicks really dug him. And that really pissed me off.
    It made me so mad. How dare they look at my man like that?! I almost got into a few fights over him. It’s embarrassing to me now but back then, I just couldn’t stand the thought of him looking at someone else.
    Of course, there was one girl in particular that had a huge crush on him. Her name was Melinda and she was determined to have him. Oh, I hated her so much. She was just so icky. She wore those little white tops with a ribbon tied at the collar and she was… Ooooh, I still can’t stand her.
    Wayne didn’t even know she existed. Bless his heart. All he saw was me. And I loved it. He was mine! Nah nah nah nah.
    (I am humming You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man) by Loretta Lynn as I write this. The music of my youth! Who needs rock and roll when you got Loretta and Conway and Patsy? Small town country life…ahh, don’t you just love it?)
    Anyway…
    One day I saw Melinda checking him out and I told her, point blank, to keep her damned eyes to herself. And she was like, ‘What’s it to you? You’re not even going out with him!’
    Oh, God! That just ran all over me and, without thinking, I went for her. I was country-assed mad and I had every intention of beating the shit out of her, but Kelsey held me back and told me she wasn’t worth it. Maybe not, but it would have made me