If He Had Been with Me Read Online Free Page A

turns to face me.
    “What?”
    “It’s a doll. A school project,” I say. She narrows her eyes at me and walks away.
    It’s an hour later at a cheap jewelry store, while Sasha is looking for a necklace for her little sister, that I see the tiara. It’s silver with clear rhinestones, the kind they used to crown the homecoming court just two months ago. We laughed and rolled our eyes at the tradition, but at the time, I’d wanted a crown, just not what it symbolized. I pick it up and slide the combs into my hair to hold it in place. I admire my head, turning it back and forth in the mirror, then step back to get the effect with jeans and a T-shirt. I like it.
    “What are you going to do with that?” Sasha says, coming up behind me at the register.
    “Wear it,” I say, “every day.”
    “Hello, Your Highness,” Jamie says to me when we meet them later outside the mall’s movie theater. I’m thrilled to have his approval. I reach out and take his hand and he kisses me hello.
    During the movie, the doll starts crying again, and Sasha and I meet each other’s eyes and start laughing. We laugh so hard that I have to go out with her into the hall while she sticks the key in the doll. We stand in the hall laughing together, her with her doll and me with my tiara, and people passing by look at us like we are crazy.
    ***
    It was a good time for us, first semester. It was the sort of happiness that fools you into thinking that there is still so much more, maybe even enough to laugh forever.

7
    “So why have you been wearing that tiara?” Finny says. The way he says it reminds me of the way he asked me why I dyed my hair, but for some reason it pisses me off this time.
    “Because I like it,” I say. It is Christmas Eve, and we are setting the dining room table with my mother’s wedding china. My father is drinking scotch in front of the Christmas tree. The Mothers are in the kitchen.
    “Okay, sorry,” he says. I glance over him. He’s wearing a red sweater that would look dorky on any other guy but makes him look like he should attend a private school on the East Coast and spend his summers rowing or something. He’s walking around the table laying a napkin at every place. I follow behind with the silverware.
    “Sorry,” I say.
    “It’s cool,” Finny says. It’s hard to make him angry.
    “It’s just that I get asked that enough at school.”
    “Then why do you wear it?”
    “Because I like it,” I say, but this time I smile and he laughs.
    At dinner, The Mothers let us have half a glass of wine each. I am secretly giddy to be treated like an adult, and the wine makes me sleepy. My father spends a lot of time talking to Finny about being the only freshman on the varsity team. He seems pleased to have something to talk about with one of us, as if Finny and I are interchangeable, as if his duty to either of us is the same. It’s easy to understand why he would think that way; the only time he is ever home for an extended amount of time is for the holidays, and Finny and Aunt Angelina are always with us then. Perhaps he thinks Aunt Angelina is his other wife.
    Mom and Aunt Angelina talk about every Christmas they can ever remember and compare them to this Christmas. This is what they do every year. Every year, it’s the best Christmas ever.
    I wish I could always believe that it is the best Christmas ever, but I can’t, because I know when the best Christmas was. It was the Christmas when we were twelve, our last Christmas in elementary school.
    It snowed the night before Christmas Eve that year. I had a new winter coat and mittens that matched my scarf. Finny and I walked down to the creek and stomped holes in the ice down to the shallow water. The Mothers made us hot chocolate and we played Monopoly until my dad came home from The Office and nothing mattered except that it was Christmas.
    It hasn’t snowed for Christmas since then, and every year there has been more and more other things that matter,