Author/Uploaded by Alyson Derrick
Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chap...
Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright III V VI VII VIII 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 Can she find her way back to the girl she loves? Forget Me Not Alyson Derrick Coauthor of New York Times Bestseller She Gets the Girl For the queer kids living in a place like Wyatt. Hang in there. It gets so much better. CHAPTER 1 I’VE SPENT MORE HOURS THAN I can count lying awake, finding hidden pictures in the random patterns of my popcorn ceiling. A rack of antlers with asymmetrical drop tines. A bundle of tulips gripped tight by spindly fingers. Most of them I’ve found before. After all, there’s only so much to discover on a ten-by-twelve ceiling. But sometimes I see something new. Like Mom’s old schoolmate Mrs. Lassam’s thick-rimmed glasses, which I’ve been staring at for the past hour. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since she walked out of Sunday Mass with us this morning. The question she asked me was simple enough. What are your plans now that you’ve graduated? It should’ve been an easy answer, the same bullshit story I tell everyone, but I’ve been spending so much time thinking about my real plans that I almost told her the actual truth. I covered it, of course, but I could’ve ruined this whole thing. I need to be more careful the closer it gets. One wrong word to the wrong person in the wrong place, and our plan will be blown to hell. The truth is I hate keeping secrets. I always have. All they really do is tear people apart. But this… This is different. Because this particular secret is the only thing keeping me whole. She is the only thing keeping me whole. I know it might sound a little extreme, but sometimes it feels like she’s the only one I can be myself around, like she’s the only thing holding my feet to the ground and without her, I might just forget who I really am and float away. She’s so much more than just a secret. She’s everything to me. For my own eye health, I force my attention away from Mrs. Lassam’s glasses and flip over onto my stomach to snag my phone off the corner of my bed. 3:17 a.m. The screen lights up with a photo of me, which I’m sure looks slightly egotistical or at least super weird from the outside. But when I look at this photo, I don’t see myself. I see what I’m smiling at: the photographer. I see Nora. Instead of my long, dark-chocolate hair, I see her dirty-blond, chin-length cut, which she’s forever regathering into a mini-ponytail at the back of her head. Instead of my sharp jawline and bony shoulders, I see her two dimples, set deep into the freckled cheeks of her round face, and her strong arms. Even though every part of her is forever carved into my mind, tonight, after what almost happened after Mass, it’s not enough to just imagine her. I need more. I slide out from underneath my blue-and-white-striped comforter and tiptoe silently across the carpet to my desk. Somewhere along the top shelf is a thin orange granite rock, lodged in the gap between two sections of wood. Slipping it out, I crouch down on the floor and stick an edge into one of the screws holding the metal vent over the air duct. They take longer to unscrew than they used to. After being taken out about a million times,