Free When I Forget You by Courtney Noel Page B

there?’ Like, wtf? Oh and my mom goes on rants that nobody is helping her with any of the ‘shit’ in the house, and you’ll be like sitting in front of her folding the damn laundry and she’ll get mad that you’re not helping out.” Kade throws his head back and laughs.
                  “You’ve got it all figured out,” he says.
                  I smile at him and our eyes lock. “Oh, and when they take your phone away for something you did, then the next day they give it back to you, tell them it didn’t affect you. Tell them they’d be smarter if they would take something that is much more important to you. Like, I said it would affect me more if they took away my phone instead of my IPod. Which is the opposite. I love my IPod, and I could care less about my phone. So I told them my phone means more to me, and now they never take away my IPod, so everyone’s happy!” I can feel my eyes sparkle when I smile at Kade and he smiles back at me. His eyes lock with mine and I literally cannot look away.
                  “So that’s how you manage to keep your ‘perfect’ reputation. You’re not perfect, but you know how to make sure people think you are,” he challenges me.
                  “I don’t try to make people think I’m perfect,” I say.
                  “Oh please. Your hair, outfits, shoes, nails. Everything is always perfect and in place,” he says. “I’ve seen you at school. You are 100% different at school than at home,” he continues. So he has a point. I try to make sure everything looks good, but I know I’m not perfect; nobody is. I try my best to be as close to perfect as I can be, though. I just love getting all the compliments. How random people come up to me and tell me I’m gorgeous. My favorite compliments are about my outfits. I always make sure my outfits are perfectly cute and match my personality. I’m definitely known as the girl with the amazing outfits. There’s nothing wrong with that.
                  “You watch me at school?” I challenge him right back.
                  “I don’t think ‘watch’ would be the appropriate word,” he says. “Well, sometimes I did watch you. My mom tells me to look after you,” he says.
                  I giggle. I can totally picture Cynthia telling Kade to watch over me and make sure I’m okay. “You don’t have to look after me, I can handle high school,” I say.
                  He laughs at my response. “When we got into high school, it wasn’t me my mom was worried about. She was worried about you,” he says. “She literally thinks of you as a daughter.”
                  “I am her daughter,” I say.  I truly am. I would go to Cynthia for anything I need. She has been in my life since I can remember. I don’t know what life is without her. I start to think about how I’m going to have to learn how to live without her. She’s in Mexico, and now there’s only a phone between us. She won’t be able to come see us. The only way we will be able to go see her if we go to her. Mexico isn’t the safest place for me as a total snow-white girl. Maybe Kade will take me. I doubt he wants to go to Mexico, though. He tries to cover up the fact that he’s Mexican, and speaks Spanish. I see it at school. He even refuses to speak Spanish to Cynthia and Rey. I’m not really sure why, though. Scratch that. I know exactly why. See, the people at my school are superficial bitches. They think that anyone who isn’t white is either 1) really fucking smart (Asians) or 2) slackers that do drugs. What has this world come to? Just because someone is a different color than white, does NOT mean they are different personality styles. I mean, yes, some of those labels are true, but not for everyone. Kade tries to hide his Mexican heritage because he doesn’t want to be labeled in the wrong way. I mean, in my