Free For Ever by C. J. Valles

message on it.
    “Wren, you can’t be mad at him forever. He
left me, not you.”
    I scowl at the phone. Seriously? It makes me
wonder: do parents receive a handbook with divorce-related
platitudes to tell their children? Part of me wants to correct her,
because as far as I’m concerned, he did leave us both.
Actually, he had checked out long before moving out of the house.
But I don’t say this. It wouldn’t help anything.
    “I’ll call when I’ve worked up a suitable
amount of teenage ire to inflict on him.”
    “Honey,” she frowns.
    “Kidding, Mom. I’ll call him.”
    Eventually , I add to myself.
    “How was school?”
    “Weird.”
    She laughs.
    “Weird? Good weird or bad weird?” I hear
muffled voices in the background. “Honey, you’ll have to tell me
about it later.”
    “Hey, Mom. Before you go … I was going to see
a movie with friends tomorrow night, if that’s all right?”
    I figure she needs some advance notice since
I haven’t really been out since we moved.
    “Of course, sweetie.”
    She says it a little too quickly, the relief
in her voice apparent.
    “You’ll be all right by yourself?” I ask.
    She laughs again.
    “Since when has your mother ever run out of
stuff to do?”
    “Good point.”
    Hanging up, I head back downstairs and turn
on the CD player in the living room. It clicks to the same Leonard
Cohen album from the first week we got here. Depressing, but it’s
one of my favorites, so I don’t bother changing it. Leaning into
the refrigerator, I start pulling out ingredients for lasagna, a
culinary feat I’ve never mastered. But chopping vegetables will
give me a chance to think things through.
    There’s Josh, the guy I like as a friend. He,
I think, likes me—or, more accurately, some fantasy version of me—a
little too much. Then there’s Jeff, the guy I want to avoid
altogether, who has decided that hitting on every girl in school,
including me, is a good way of getting back at his ex-girlfriend.
The thing that cracks me up is that last year I wouldn’t have even
made his list. Maybe I should write a thank-you note to the
dermatologist who prescribed the meds that cleared up my face over
the summer.
    Last on the list is the guy I can’t get out
of my head. The one who, despite having quick reflexes, has ignored
me as aggressively as he avoids every other living, breathing
entity. He’s also the guy ninety-nine percent of the female
population in school has had some kind of fantasy about. Which
means that I’ve got a better chance of winning the lottery than him
suddenly waking up from his social coma and sweeping me off my feet
before we ride off into the sunset on a white horse like the Disney
version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . The image makes
me smirk.
    When the tomato sauce starts bubbling in the
saucepot, I begin laying down strips of raw lasagna noodles into a
glass dish before spreading the ricotta and sprinkling mozzarella
over them. I ladle sauce and vegetables over each layer, putting a
great deal of faith in an article on the Internet that said the
uncooked noodles will soften in the oven. That, or it’s going to
sound like we’re eating tortilla chips.
    With the timer on the oven set, I return to
my room and send Ashley a text to see if she can pick me up
tomorrow night before the movie. This way I’ll be able to avoid
having to get a ride—alone—with Josh. When my homework is mostly
done, I search the entire Internet for cheap used vehicles. Not
having much luck, I head back downstairs to take out the
lasagna.
    The music ended a long time ago. Now it’s so
quiet that I can hear the clock on the mantle in the living room
ticking off the seconds. Instead of sitting alone at the kitchen
table to eat, I go to my room and finish dinner at my desk.
Checking e-mail and listening to music makes dinner alone seem less
unbearable, at least until I see the two messages in my inbox. Both
are from my father. One is from a week ago, which I never