Process

THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER

Copyright 2011 by Melissa JaroszAll rights reserved.

Produced and designed at Michigan State University for STA 463 Book Design.Publication printed using

The Truth About Forever.By: Melissa Jarosz

Preface

God, she said, sighing as she pushed her hair out of her face,

doesn’t it seem, sometimes, that the whole damn world’s uphill?

Yeah,

I said, thinking about everything that had already happened to me that night.

It sure does.

Oh well,

She said, leaning over her cart and tightening her fingers around its handle.

At least we know the way back will be easy. Come on.

Part 1

My dad died. And I was there.

This was how people knew me. Not as Macy Queen, daughter of Deborah, who built houses in brand new cul-de-sacs. Or as sister of Caroline, who’d had just about the most beautiful wedding anyone had ever seen at the Lakeview Inn the previous summer. Not even as the one-time holder of the record for the fifty-yard dash, middle school division. Nope. I was Macy Queen, who’d woken up the day after Christmas and gone outside to see her father splayed out at the end of the road, a stranger pumping away at his broad chest. I saw my dad die. That was who I was now.

We introduced ourselves about halfway up the hill, when we stopped, wheezing, to catch our breath.

Her name was Kristy Palmetto.

I like it, she said.

I intend to change my name as soon as I get to a place where nobody knows me, you know, where I can reinvent myself. I’ve always wanted to do that. I think I want to be a VERONIQUE.Or maybe Blaancaa.Something with FLAIR, you know. Anybody can be a Kristy.

Macy? she’d said.

Like the store?

Yes, I replied.

It’s a family name, actually.

Maybe, I thought, as she started to push her cart again. But even five minutes into our friendship, I knew that this Kristy was different.

Part 2

Look,

she said, as I struggled with this, trying to work it out,

I don’t know you that well. I’lladmit that. But what I see is a girl any guy, especially some library nerd who’s off at Cranium Camp—

Brain Camp, I muttered.

He doesn’t make me feel bad about myself, I said, knowing even as my lips formed the words this was exactly what he did. Or what I let him do. It was hard to say.

—would totally want to hear say she loved him. You’re smart, you’re gorgeous, you’re a good person. I mean, what makes him such a catch, anyway? Who is he to judge?

What you need, Kristy said,

what you deserve, is a guy who adooores you for what you are. Who doesn’t see you as a project, but a prize.

You know?

I’m no prize, I said, shaking my head.

Yes, she said, and she sounded so sure it startled me: like she could be so positive while hardly knowing me at all.

You are. What sucks is how you can’t even see it.

I turned my head, looking back out at the clearing. It seemed no matter where I turned, someone was telling me to change.

Kristy reached over and put her hand on mine, holding it there until I had to look

up at her.

I’m not picking on you.

No? I said.

She shook her head.

Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyone who doesn’t appreciate and value you.

said er day life was long,

I shot back. is it

It’s both, she said, shrugging.

It all depends on how you choose to live it.

It’s like

FOREVER always

changing.

I said.

No, she replied, squeezing my hand,

whats impossible is that we actually think it could be anything other then that. Look, when I was in the hospital, right after the accident, they thought I was going to die. I was really fucked up, big time.

Uh-huh, Monica said, looking at her sister.

Then, Kristy continued, nodding at her,

life was very short, literally. But now that I’m better, it seems so long I have to squint to see even the e d g e s o f i t .

It’s all in the view, Macy. That’s what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You can never know for sure, so you’d better make every second count.

Monica, lighting another cigarette, nodded.

Mmm-hmm,

she said.

What you have to decide, Kristy said to me, leaning forward,

is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow,

It seemed like it was a choice I had already made. I’d spent the last year and a half with Jason, shaping my life to fit his, doing what I had to in order to make sure I had a place in his perfect world, where things made sense. But it hadn’t worked.

would this be how you’d want to have spent it?

the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody.

Listen, Kristy said,

So don’t be afraid.

Be alive.

She looked at me hard, making sure I knew what she meant. I did.

But then, I couldn’t imagine, after everything that had happened, how you could live and not constantly be worrying about the dangers all around you. Especially when you’d already gotten the scare of your life.

I told her.

What is? She asked.

I told her.

What is? She asked.

and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn’t understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me.

No, she said slowly,

Macy, no. It’s not.

It’s not, I repeated in my head, and looking back later, it seemed to me that was the moment, everything really changed. When I said these words, not even aloud, and in doing so made my own wish: that for me this could somehow, someday, really be true.

The end.

About the typeThis book has been set in Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold, Reading Frequency, and Times New Roman. Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold was created in 1992. It is a versatile sans serif that has a casual look and feel. Reading Frequency is a unique type created by Vlad Rudakov in 2010. It is a mix of audible and visual forms displayed in a typeset creating a casual, flowing type that can be hard to read at first. Times New Roman was created by Stanley Morison and VictorLardent in 1931. This serif type was created to have great legibility and spacing for each letter, giving it a precise look.