Free But I Love Him by Amanda Grace Page B

start to turn away from her, but she grabs me by the arm.
    “Don’t lie.” Her voice is quiet, soft, pleading. “Please, just don’t lie. I get why you blow me off. I get why things have changed. But you’ve never lied to me. Just don’t start now, okay?”
    I nod, slowly, staring down at her fingers and her French-manicured nails. She releases my arm and I look up at her.
    I don’t know how she manages to be so understanding. I don’t think I could do that, if the roles were reversed. If my best friend ditched me for a boy. But she gets it. Somehow, she gets it.
    “Thank you. For … for just being you.”
    She nods solemnly and takes a step back. “I’ll go talk to him. Go pay for your stuff.”
    I nod back at her, but I’m frozen, just staring at her nose, a thousand feelings and thoughts swirling until I’m lost to them, and she grabs my shoulder and gives it a small shake. “Hey. If you don’t want to talk to him, then go. Okay?” She sighs and releases my shoulder. “And Ann?”
    I look up at her.
    “If you ever need me or want to talk, or …”
    I nod.
    “Good.”
    I just nod again and grab the Mike and Ike and scurry out of the aisle, not looking back.
    Abby is a goddess.
    And I’m just …
    I don’t know what I am anymore.
    But I’m not who I used to be.
    March 12
    Six Months, twelve days
    I was kicked off the track team today. Too many missed practices, he said. Said I wasn’t dedicated to it anymore.
    I know I should care. I know it should hurt. This was my senior year. I was going to rule the place. I was going to beat my record for long jump and win my first two-mile.
    But even as the words left the coach’s mouth, I was over it. Things like track and high school aren’t as important to me as they once were. The hours I spent with the team every day, I only thought of him. I thought of lying next to him on the bed and watching movies. I thought of talking to him and walking with him and being with him.
    Sometimes I think I’d give up everything if I could just spend every day with him, alone in his room, listening to music and just … being together.
    I’ve been running my fastest times all month. Because I knew the second I was done, I would walk to the locker room without even cooling off. I’d still be sweating when I switched into my street clothes. My face would still be flushed when I climbed into my car and left the school in my rearview mirror, heading straight to his place.
    Now I have another hour every day for him. Now I can go straight to his house after school and cook us both dinner and wait for him.
    I’ll have more time to work on my glass sculpture, too. It’s taking so much longer than I thought it would. Hours and hours. But I enjoy it. It’s become my outlet. When I’m working on it, I think of nothing else. I lose myself in the glass pieces, in the way the light glints off the curved surfaces.
    Whenever I have more than a few hours free, I go to the shore and refill my supplies of glass. I find treasures in the sand, reds and greens and blues, and I take them back and imagine where they will go.
    The heart will be beautiful when I am done with it. I know it.
    I empty my gym locker after I leave the coach’s office. I try not to look at the things I stuff into a plastic bag. The shoes and the warm-ups and the meet schedule and the little unopened bag of goldfish crackers I use on away meets.
    The pictures inside the door are the hardest, because even though I don’t look at them, it’s like the eyes are staring at me.
    There were three of us who ran the two-mile. Three of us that were any good at it, anyway. We called ourselves the tripod. Said we could hold up the whole team on our legs, that we would accumulate enough points to keep our school in the lead for divisions.
    And we would have. Meets were just about ready to start up for the season. I know we could have done it.
    I don’t want these pictures anymore. I don’t even want them in my bag. I just