Free Forever in Blue by Ann Brashares Page B

person’s death becomes scientific rather than emotional?”
    She knew he was asking the question rhetorically, but she actually wanted to answer it. “I’d say you calculate it by the death of the last person whose life overlapped with theirs. The point when they lose the power to help or hurt a living soul.”
    He smiled at her certainty. “That’s your hypothesis?”
    “That’s my hypothesis.”
    “But don’t you think the power to help or hurt can extend far beyond a person’s natural life?” he asked.
    “I don’t,” she proclaimed, almost reflexively. Sometimes she felt the magnet of certainty more than truth.
    “Then you, my friend, have a thing or two to learn from the Greeks.”
    Lenny,
    I enclose the Pants with a little bit of ancient dirt and a picture of me with my new boyfriend, Hector. He’s not so lively, you may say. But he’s got the wisdom of the ages.
    A whole lot of love from yer pal Bee (and a toothy kiss from yer pal-in-law, Hector)
    Carmen did run lines with Julia. She ran them for hours on end for two straight days. Julia wanted to try a range of parts before she settled on her audition strategy.
    Carmen was relieved when Julia went to the office to photocopy more pages so Carmen could at least have a break and check her e-mail. She had a list of unread messages from Bee and Lena and her mom and her step-brother, Paul.
    When Julia got back, she immediately noticed a picture Carmen had printed out and left on her desk.
    “Hey, who’s this?” Julia asked. She picked up the paper and studied it.
    It was a picture of Bee in Turkey holding a human skull and pretending to kiss it. Bee had sent it over the Internet, and it had made Carmen laugh so much she’d printed it out.
    “That’s my friend Bridget,” Carmen said.
    “Really?”
    “Yeah.”
    Carmen knew it was strange of her that she didn’t talk about her friends more to Julia. She mentioned them in passing once in a while, but she never expressed what they really meant to her. She wasn’t sure why. It was as though she had put them and Julia into two different compartments. They didn’t mix. She didn’t want them to mix.
    “She’s your friend?” Julia looked vaguely doubtful, like perhaps Carmen had clipped the picture from a magazine and was just pretending.
    Maybe that was why, Carmen thought.
    “She’s amazing-looking. Check out those legs,” Julia said.
    “She’s a jock.”
    “She’s pretty. Where does she go to school?”
    It was funny. Carmen didn’t think of Bee as pretty, exactly. Bee didn’t have the patience for it. “Brown,” she said.
    “I thought about going there. Williams is a lot more intellectual, though.”
    This from a girl who read not only Us Weekly each week, but Star and OK! as well. Carmen shrugged.
    “Her hair looks kind of fake. She should use a darker shade.”
    “What?”
    “Does she color it herself?”
    “Bridget? She doesn’t color her hair at all. That’s her hair.”
    “That’s her real hair?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s what she tells you, anyway,” Julia said, half jokingly, but Carmen didn’t find it funny.
    She looked at Julia, wondering what was up. Was she honestly competing with a girl she’d never met?
    “Hey, let’s go pick up something quick for dinner and bring it back here,” Julia suggested later, after another hour of lines. “I want to keep studying.”
    “You can stay here,” Carmen offered. “I’ll go get it.” She was frankly glad to get away from lines, glad to be outside. The grounds of the place were beautiful, especially in the evening light. There were miniature weeping trees along the paths and huge annual gardens around the main buildings.
    In her appreciation of the flowers, she lost track of the cafeteria, known by the apprentices as the canteen. She walked until she got to a pretty hillside overlooking the valley. It was lush and so sweet in this light.
    Carmen stood there looking at it for a long