Text From the Future: Dump Your Girlfriend novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Town Square

Thanksgiving at the Lindahl house started at two and ended with my father asking Lena if she wanted to see his truck.

"It's a very nice truck," Lena told me, in the kitchen, with a dish towel on her shoulder. "He says it has four hundred thousand miles. I think he loves it more than the turkey."

"He does."

"I'm going to marry into this family for the stuffing alone."

My mother, at the sink, dropped a spoon and pretended not to have heard.

Lena's parents were on a cruise they had booked in June, and she had laughed about it so hard in the car that I knew it hurt.

My mother had set a place for Lena before I finished asking if she could come.

At six, while we were doing the dishes, the doorbell rang.

My father went. He came back with an envelope.

"Chelsea's mother," he said. "She said to give it to you and not to wait."

It was thick, and the paper was lined, from a school notebook.

I held it for a moment and gave it to Lena.

"You don't have to read it," she said.

"I know."

"You don't have to answer it, either."

"I know that too." I looked at the envelope. "I'd like to read it. I think I'm done being afraid of it."

I read it at the kitchen table, with the dishwater running.

It was six pages, in blue pen, and she had written the way she talked, in a rush, and crossed out only twice.

She said she was working at Rosie's. She said she had told her mother everything, and her mother hadn't spoken to her for two days. She said she had deleted nothing, because she didn't know how to.

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