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Back Never Look Back Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
  48. About the Author
  49. About the Book
  50. Also by Alison Gaylin
  51. About the Publisher

The area of the parking lot where we are right now is packed, couples drinking and smoking in the cars or leaning back and looking up at the sky from the seats of open convertibles. Other kids are roaming around the area on foot, laughing and shouting, jumping up onto hoods and leaning into windows. In the distance, I can see a group on the baseball diamond, a guy in a pale blue tux rounding the bases. Everyone is wasted and happy. Not a grown-up in sight.

Music blasts out of car radios. All of them are turned to the same station—the AM Top 40 station I used to listen to at home. “Oh, what a night,” Frankie Valli sings, and he isn’t kidding. The air outside is warm and smells of pot smoke and beer and I wish I could escape into it. I wish I could turn my body to powder and float away forever.

Gabriel is muttering to himself very quietly. I almost feel like I can hear his brain working as we reach a more secluded area, the make-out area, where cars are parked far apart from each other and the windows are steamed white. Gabriel drives slowly behind the parked cars, eyeing each one—a shiny vintage Mustang, a green VW beetle, a long black Cadillac that has to belong to someone’s dad. I can’t take my eyes off one car, though. It’s a powder blue Honda Accord, and I know it belongs to Brian Griggs because I’ve memorized his license plate. If I squint hard enough, I swear I can see through the fogged-up window—his silhouette in the front seat, his rich, mean, beautiful girlfriend, Carrie Masters, leaning into him. They kiss and he holds her face in both his hands as though it’s precious and delicate. Something tightens in my chest, a dull pain in my heart. Carrie Masters called me a dumb whore once. I passed the two of them in the hallway and said hi. I normally don’t say hi to Brian when Carrie is around, but I said it that time. He said “Hi,” back. And Carrie said, “Why would you say hi to that dumb whore?” She didn’t even bother to whisper it. She didn’t care if I heard.

Gabriel is watching me now. I expect him to ask me what I’m writing, but instead, he asks me who I’m looking at. How do I answer without upsetting him? “Nothing,” I say. “No one.” But the pain is still there and I’m sure Gabriel can feel it radiating off me.

If Brian Griggs loves someone as awful as Carrie Masters, he must be kind of awful too.