Free The Secret Year by Jennifer R. Hubbard Page A

mouth would cost him a pint of blood. I used to think maybe he was just uncomfortable with me because he knew about Julia, but I’d seen him treat Kirby the same way at school. It was as if he had an invisible igloo to retreat into whenever he felt like it.
    “Smile, Colten!” Al the manager said as he policed the dining room. He’d recently come up with a truly sickening slogan, “Smiles sell steaks,” which made me want to dump a tub of ranch dressing over his head. I turned my back to him, so he couldn’t see whether I was smiling or not, and dragged a wet rag over a table.
    What did I have to smile about? I was trapped in a bad situation with Syd, and my back and legs ached as if I were seventy instead of seventeen. When I got home tonight, my parents and brother would circle one another like Rottweilers in the local park, testing to see who would be the first to give ground. And worst of all, Julia was dead.
    Julia had no patience with me when I got into a mood like this. “Don’t sulk,” she’d say, jabbing me in the ribs. “I’m the one who gets to be temperamental. I’m the spoiled rich one, remember?” If she couldn’t make me laugh, she’d bait me until I flared up at her. She liked to set me off because, she said, it was so hard to do. “I love a challenge. Honestly, Colt, you have to be the calmest person alive.” I swear if she could talk to me right now, she’d say something like, “Hey, stop acting like you’re the one who’s suffering. I’m the one who got killed, remember?”
    When I got home with my head still full of Julia, a message was waiting for me: Syd had called. I didn’t call her right back. I opened the notebook instead.
     
    Dear C.M.,
    I want to break up with Austin, but we’ve got this wedding coming up at the end of December, a friend of both of our families. It would be awkward to break up before that. I know that sounds like a lame excuse, and maybe it is. But my life is so wrapped up with Austin’s. Our families know each other. We’re always seeing each other at picnics and dances and the country club. We’re in the same group of friends. It’s hard to get away from him. Well, I don’t expect you to understand.
    I’m so confused. I think I like you more than Austin, but you’re so different, your life is so different. And it’s not easy to break up with someone you’ve known for such a long time.
     
    Saturday night, I was on my bed with Syd, half our clothes off. She had come over, and again I’d let things go way too far. We hadn’t had sex yet, but I got the feeling she wouldn’t stop me if I tried. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she whispered.
    “You’d survive just fine,” I told her.
    She gave a sort of shocked laugh and slapped my arm. “Colt! I mean it. You’re the best thing in my life right now.”
    That did it. Tom was right; I wasn’t doing her any good. I sat up and said, “No, I’m not.”
    “Yes, you—”
    “Syd, look. I never should’ve started with you, because—” I choked on the words. I didn’t want to hurt her, I really didn’t. “I want to go back to being friends, the way we were before.”
    She sat up, too, her eyes wide. She wore a front-hook bra, which I had opened, but now she pulled it together in the middle. “Why?”
    “It’s the way I’ve felt all along. I just didn’t have the nerve to tell you. Because of your parents . . .”
    “So, what, you feel sorry for me? Screw that.” She hooked her bra and yanked her shirt over her head. “Don’t do me any favors.”
    “I know. I should’ve—well, I’m sorry.”
    “Where are my shoes?” She paced the floor, hunting for them. She picked up my shirt and threw it at me. I stayed on the bed, watching her, trying to find the right words so she would calm down and not hate me.
    She knelt to peer under the bed. Then she looked up at me and said, “We’re good together. Why do you want to wreck everything?”
    I licked my lips, trying