Where We Used to Roam by Jenn Bishop (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📕

lately. They didn’t know him that well, and I guess I figured things would get better, that the way he was acting was temporary. But I wasn’t so sure anymore. Sometimes people change and it isn’t for the better and they don’t go back to the way they were before.

So I told her. How Austin still hadn’t come home from the night before with his friends. How my dad was so chill about it. Maybe Mom would’ve been different if she’d been home, but she was out. My brother hadn’t let me down before. Not like this.

I should have seen it coming, with the way he’d been about, well, everything since he got hurt. As if he was the only person who mattered.

“What if I go with you?” Kennedy offered. “Maybe Mama K can take us? She loves the MFA. Let me check.”

Her response was the one thing that made me feel less bad about everything. But it wasn’t enough. “It’s too late,” I said. “They close at five.”

“I’m sorry, Em. He sucks. Do you want to come over? The moms are getting a pizza. They’re about to call it in. We can put pineapple on it for you.”

“That’s okay. I’m not really hungry.”

“Sorry—I gotta go. See you tomorrow?”

“Later.”

I peeked at my messages again, even though I knew there weren’t any from him. The one from Becca was still there though. Sorry, I wrote back. I’m busy.

I dug through my desk drawer until I found a yellow pad of Post-its. With a fat black Sharpie, I scrawled, You owe me, and slapped it on my brother’s door.

At four forty-five I heard a loud squeal from a car outside. A moment later the sound of the front door opening and shutting. Dad and Austin exchanged a few words, but what exactly they said, I didn’t know. I’d listened in on enough of their conversations lately and it wasn’t getting me anywhere.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs—just quick enough to not have been Dad’s.

Austin cursed. “That was today.” A knock on my door. “Emma?”

I hated that I couldn’t help myself, hated that tears were streaming down my cheeks like some little kid whose mom had denied them the toy they wanted at Target. I was never that kid who made a scene—not even when I was little. Keeping everything inside was never hard for me. Even when I was a baby, Mom said I was always happy as a clam.

“Emma, come on.”

I couldn’t let him see me like this. He wouldn’t open my door without me saying it was okay. We had rules, me and Austin. A closed door meant you didn’t bother the other person.

He stayed there for a while, pacing in the hall right in front of our rooms. Then his phone buzzed and he laughed. Laughed.

He sucks.

Right when Kennedy had said it, I’d felt this little pinch. Like, who was she to say my brother sucked? But to laugh? Right now? After what he did?

Kennedy was right.

Austin did suck.

The only person he cared about was himself.

CHAPTER TEN

At lunch on Monday, Kennedy didn’t bring up what happened the day before with Austin, and that was fine by me. When I was at school, I didn’t want to worry about the person my brother was turning into. (Had turned into?)

While Kennedy picked out the fluffy insides of today’s cafeteria rolls, Lucy quietly reached into her backpack and set some kind of catalog in the middle of the cafeteria table. “My stepdad showed me this last night,” she said. “What do you think?”

Kennedy snatched it off the table before I even got a good look at it. “Yes. A million times yes.”

“What is it?” I asked.

She flashed the cover, which said RISD Young Artists in bold, bright colors.

“What’s R.I.S.D.?” I asked.

“Riz-Dee,” she said. “Rhode Island School of Design. You know, in Providence. Summer. Art. Camp! On the campus and also on the beach. The beach!” Kennedy swooned backward. “Okay, we’re going. We’re so going. Aggghhh!” She shoveled all the pieces of roll into her mouth so fast I thought she might choke on them.

Right then Haven Mulligan passed by our table. She was one of those girls who was popular even though nobody seemed to actually like her that much. “Spaz much?” She raised her eyebrows at Kennedy. Kennedy raised an eyebrow right back at her. Lucy’s cheeks went pink.

By the time Kennedy finished chewing all that roll, Haven had sat down a few tables over with her friends.

I loved how Kennedy didn’t even seem to care about them. It was like she was above all that.

“Okay, so, I’ll ask the moms tonight,” she said. “Em, you in?”

I nodded. Each week at camp meant one fewer week hanging out at the store with Mom. Not that I didn’t like hanging out with my mom all summer. It was just that she thought it was super exciting for me to “learn the ropes” because someday the store could be mine if I wanted. But spending part of the summer near the ocean with my friends and real live artists? That beat getting to browse shoe catalogs and double-check inventory, easy.

All day, I couldn’t stop imagining what it would be like to learn from someone like Joseph Cornell, except, you know, still alive. Having a whole week—or more if Mom and Dad let me do a couple of the programs—to think, live, and breathe art. And also eat pizza. According to Lucy, whose grandma lived there, Providence had the best pizza.

Lucy’s grandma taught physics at Brown and had a guest room we could share. The whole thing sounded so perfect I could barely believe it.

Dad was still off work with that gnarly cold, so he swung by school to pick me up, and on the ride home I told him all about it.

“Sounds perfect for you.”

“So I can go? For real?”

“Mom and I’ll talk it over tonight. And I’d like to chat a bit with Lucy’s grandmother, make sure