Free Roomies by Sara Zarr, Tara Altebrando Page A

kissed me and I felt, for once, like everything was going to be okay. More than okay, even. Maybe actually good. But none of that matters anymore. His dad and my mom made sure of that.
    “I want to see you again.” Mark’s smile is so easy and real that it hurts to look at. “I mean, I know I’m seeing you right now, but I mean, I want to see you, see you.”
    “I have a boyfriend,” I blurt.
    He jolts like I’ve kicked him in the gut and then he tilts his head and says, “I don’t understand.”
    And I just say, “Sorry,” and walk toward my car.
    “Elizabeth,” he calls out after me, and, for a second, I regret not making him call me EB because it all sounds so dramatic and serious now. Then even though I shouldn’t—because what’s the point—I turn.
    He says, “I can wait.”
    “For what?” I’m definitely going to cry.
    “For you.” He starts to back away and he still looks sort of confused and wounded and like he’s trying to shake the feeling off. His voice is softer, more tentative, when he says, “For you to figure it out.”

    I only drive a block before I pull over and have a good cry. I want to call my mother and scream at her. I want to call Justine and apologize about missing her birthday and tell her the whole messy story, but we still haven’t talked and, well, I’m still miffed about the prude comment. I wish, again, that I could call Lauren and let it all out but what would she think of this ? Mostly, I want to turn around and drive back to Mark’s house and tell him about the mess—tell him he’s in it, too—but then he wouldn’t ever want to be with me anyway, and how could he? And all of this thinking about who to tell what, makes me wish there were one person I could share everything—all of me, all my shit—with and that I weren’t stuck trying to cobble together some kind of (groan) “support system” out of this bunch of random people in my life. Sometimes, when I feel so adrift, so like that balloonslipping away, I wonder if it’s my father’s fault. If his leaving did this . Did this to me.
    My phone buzzes and I reach for it and hope it’s a text from Mark but it’s an alert from my calendar, something I’ve set up to notify me of how many days I’ve got left: forty. I wonder, if I told Lauren everything that was going on, whether I could go out there early, maybe stay with her and her five sibs. They’d hardly even notice if there was someone else bunking in their house.
    Or, I don’t know, would it be crazy to ask my dad? Doesn’t he owe me that much? A place to crash for a few weeks before college? Because I can’t possibly be around my mother or Mark now that I know what’s going on.
    Alex calls right then and I pick up. I can’t avoid everybody forever.
    “We need to talk,” he says, and I say, “You’re right. We do.”
    I shoot off an e-mail before heading to meet him on the beach.
    Dear Lauren,
    Things are crazy here. So crazy I don’t even think you’d believe me if I told you. I will suffer in silence like you, at least until we meet, and then I will inevitably bore you with all the gory details. Right now I’m going to meet my boyfriend to “talk.” Did I even mention I had a boyfriend? I do. Sort of. For about six months. Or did. I have a feeling he’s breaking up with me. He’s the one who wants to “talk.” I’m not sure I care. Ugh. Do you have a boyfriend? Wish me luck.
    —EB
    PS Almost forgot! Love that video. LOVED Veronica Mars. Do you know it?
    PPS Also good job on the scholarship! Been meaning to say that!
    I think about e-mailing my father then, too. But here’s the kicker. I don’t even have his e-mail address. I Google the gallery and there’s an info@ address that might go to him but what if it goes to someone else? And am I really going to ask him if I can… how to even say it…“crash” at his “pad”? After all this time?
    Just imagining his face when he reads that e-mail is reason enough not to