Free Weird Girl and What's His Name by Meagan Brothers

exhaled hard. My hands were trembling, sweating. Andy waited. I stared hard at him. I could see his muscles tense, the caution in his eyes.
    â€œThis is bullshit,” I muttered finally. I walked past him, out the sliding glass door, back into the woods. I took a long time walking home. Thinking about what Speed had said. That boy’s a monster! Sure, there were certain things that could get me really angry if I thought about them too long—my mom getting drunk all the time, the guys she brought home, my dad being totally AWOL, Aunt Judith always leaving on her trips, people being mean to Lula—but nothing Andy said or did ever made the list.
    But there was all the insecure stuff that crept into my mind on all those nights just like this one, where I was sneaking back into my house after being with him, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. An overgrown adolescent? Is that all he thinks I am? Is that why he won’t commit to me?? He’s always pushing me away, pushing me to go to college, to meet other guys. Talking about how handsome other young guys are, trying to get me to agree. Would he rather have some other handsome young guy? Because I don’t care about those guys. I don’t want some young Heath Ledger-type. I want Andy. And he doesn’t want me.
    When I got home, my heart was pounding. My hands were still shaking. I wanted to run or scream or something. I paced in the clearing, behind a stand of skinny pines. I drove my fist into one of them, landing the punch with a grunt. It didn’t make anything better. I stood at the edge of the woods for a long time, flexing my bruised knuckles, looking across the backyard at the soft yellow light coming through the kitchen window. I should stay out here, I thought to myself. In the woods. In the shadows. This is where monsters live.
    J ANET AND L EO WERE STILL UP, sitting in their matching recliners in front of the flat-screen. Guys and Dolls on Turner Classic Movies. I managed to get past them without having to say much, and I made it up to Lula’s room. The lights were off. She was tucked in beneath her puffy white down comforter, watching a DVD of X-Files outtakes she’d downloaded from the Internet.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you?” she said before she even saw that I’d been crying.
    â€œI . . . had a fight. With my mom,” I lied. I felt like my chest was going to explode, I wanted to tell her so much. I wanted to tell her what happened, I wanted her to help me figure it out. How I let myself behave like a brute to the man I loved.
    â€œShit, kiddo. You’re a mess. You wanna talk about it?”
    â€œYeah. But I can’t.” At least that much was true. I sniffled, and she handed me a Kleenex from the box on her desk. I sat down on the floor, honking my nose.
    â€œLula, do you think I’m a . . . like a bad guy, or something?”
    â€œWhat’d you do, rob a bank?” She tsked at me. “Rory. Don’t be silly. You’re the best guy,” she said softly. “C’mon. Wanna watch X-Files blooper reels?” I nodded. Lula cued up the DVD. I looked up at her, her face illuminated by the TV.
    â€œCan I get into bed with you?” I asked suddenly. I don’t know why I said it. I expected her to laugh at me, to brush me off with one of her usual jokes. I was already backtracking in my mind. I didn’t mean it that way. What way did I mean it, then? I just wanted to be close to somebody right then. Somebody who wasn’t going to ask me not to feel how I felt. Sometimes I wished it could be as easy with Andy as it was with Lula. On the other hand, now Lula was looking at me with this look of . . . what, exactly? Was she totally weirded out that I asked to climb into bed with her? I couldn’t exactly blame her. The list of people who wanted to get into bed with me, for sleeping purposes or otherwise, was pretty damn short, even when I