Free Toxic by Kim Karr Page A

trust fund with millions in it. I wanted to share with him what I had. Pay for him to go to grad school. But I knew he’d never accept a dime from anyone. That was just how he was—proud.
    On the drive home, Kat and Jeremy mostly talked. It was a relief. He stroked his thumb back and forth over my hand while I closed my eyes and pretended everything was going to be okay.
    But I knew that wasn’t true.
    How could it be?
    Kat was suspicious.
    Jeremy didn’t have a clue.
    I was a liar.
    And I knew I was going to stay that way.
    Another three weeks passed.
    Everything was blissful.
    But I had yet to tell him the truth.
    What Jeremy and I were having was a great love affair.
    That’s what Lily called it anyway. She called me almost every day for updates. She wanted sex updates more than anything else. She couldn’t have been happier for me. She was even more happy that I had come to know what a real orgasm was. And she was right; I hadn’t known what I was missing.
    But what she didn’t understand was the guilt I felt that my new relationship was built on a lie. For almost two months now, I had been pretending to be Phoebe Saint. A girl from the city. No one special. Average. No one anyone particularly cared about except Jeremy.
    And that was all true, except for two things—my name and my money.
    The lie had grown gargantuan. I had told him my father was a manager, which he was. I just didn’t tell him my father was the man he hated.
    My friends pleaded with me to tell him the truth. They could see how much I cared about him. But they were so lost in their own adventures—mine wasn’t much of a blip on their radar. With Lily gone, I was mostly on my own. Emmy was high now most of the time, Danny was being Danny and just having fun, and Logan, like me, wasn’t around much. Something was going on with his father that had caused him to have to go to Boston a few times. All I knew was each time he came back he had enough coke with him to make both Emmy and Jamie happy.
    I, on the other hand, wasn’t pleased with the drug use at all but since Jamie wasn’t exactly happy with me, he wasn’t listening to what I had to say. He didn’t like where my relationship with Jeremy was headed, which according to him was nowhere since I refused to tell him the truth.
    It wasn’t that I refused.
    I just couldn’t.
    Jeremy and I spent little time in town. We’d ventured into South Hampton itself only once or twice, so it wasn’t hard to avoid seeing my parents.
    At least I didn’t have that to worry about. I couldn’t even think about whether my father would find out about my mother’s affair and leave her. Regardless of everything, my father and I were her life. I couldn’t accept what she’d done. I didn’t understand it. I despised cheaters. So I chose not to think about it.
    Instead I spent my time with Jeremy—happy. Time passed quickly.
    It was a sunny afternoon and I was sitting out on the back porch when I clicked SCHEDULE on the Department of Motor Vehicles Web site. Signing up to take my driver’s test was so easy, so real, I couldn’t contain myself.
    I shot up and ran in the house. “Jamie,” I yelled.
    He came into the kitchen looking like shit. “What the fuck? Is the house on fire?”
    “I need a ride to the club.”
    He ran his hand through his hair. “Why now?”
    “I have some good news I can’t wait to share.”
    “And that would be?”
    “I scheduled my test to get my license.”
    Jamie never said no. “You better fucking love me because you know if you were anyone else you’d have to blow me first.”
    I was used to his crassness. Jeremy would probably kick his ass just for saying it to me, but I knew if they’d spent any real time together, they’d be friends. They were a lot alike.
    Emmy walked in. “Can I tag along?”
    She must have been listening.
    Her bleached waves of hair fell all the way to the points of her pelvic bones, which protruded even more in her skimpy