Free The Saver by Edeet Ravel

Michelle telling me about this clinic for teens, Head and Hands, that gives out free condoms. I’m hoping they also give free painkillers. I have to wait until tomorrow to call. They’re closed on Sundays.
    I’m worried that they’ll be closed tomorrow too. We’re having a blizzard again and they’re predicting another 30 cm of snow. I went out to shovel about ten times, and each time it was like I was starting from scratch. Good thing the walkway is short.
    I have to start thinking about a job with free food, but I can’t concentrate. I didn’t ask David if I’m allowed to have another job. If you don’t ask you can say you didn’t know.
    Xanoth, I feel really down today. I hate this stupid tiny apartment. I hate that Mom died. How could she just die like that? Now I’ll never have a chance to say goodbye or tell her I’m sorry.
    Too bad I don’t believe in God or heaven. Ginnie, agirl I was once friends with, told me humans invented the idea of God millions of years ago to explain things like thunder and lightning.
    Ginnie was the only girl I was ever friends with. That was in grade four, the same year I had Mrs. Johnston. She was in a different school, but she lived in the building next door. That building’s a dump, but it tries to look like not a dump. They have a buzzer and a lobby and a laundry room in the basement, which we were allowed to use because the same company owns both buildings. They were more strict about who they rented to there.
    Ginnie’s apartment was smaller than ours, but it was in better shape. Ginnie had a sister who was three, and we used to babysit together when her parents went out. Grade four is kind of young to babysit, but all we had to do was stay awake and call Ginnie’s parents on their cell if there was a problem.
    Her parents were strange. The father was a nightclub singer and very old-fashioned. He was from France and he wore a suit and tie. The mom was very into looking sexy and having sexy underwear and perfume and done-up hair and low-cut sexy dresses. She always acted like she was in a play or a movie.
    Ginnie was probably the nicest person I ever met. You don’t usually get niceness like that in kids. She had a happy face and brown hair that was hard to brush because it was so curly. Everything she had, she wanted to share or give away. Even when her grandmother fromFrance sent her two hair clips with rhinestones, she gave me one.
    I used to spend every weekend with her. On Saturday morning her parents made a special breakfast and they invited me. It wasn’t really breakfast, because it was at noon, but they called it breakfast. They had marble cake and a lace tablecloth and blue candles in silver holders. Ginnie’s dad said some prayer in another language and then they sang some of their old-fashioned nightclub songs in French. Ginnie and I wrote down the words of one of the songs, Ne Me Quitte Pas, and we sang it in the park at the top of our lungs, and everyone looked and we cracked up. I still remember the words. All the things I’ll do for you if you don’t go away.
    Then all of a sudden in May, before school was even over, Ginnie’s grandmother died and they moved to France to live in her apartment. Ginnie sent me two postcards. I still have them. One’s of the Eiffel Tower and one’s of a statue. In the first one she gave me her address – Ginnie Sassoon, 147 rue de Sévigné, Paris 4ème. The year we were friends I wrote Fern Sassoon on all my books and notebooks. I forgot about that.
    I thought of writing to her a few times, but she’s probably got a million friends and barely remembers me. I only fit into her life because we were both little kids and I lived next door and she didn’t know anyone else.
    Anyhow, Ginnie’s the one who told me God was invented. After that, I couldn’t go back to believing. Ionly believed in the first place because of