Crimson Eve by Brandilyn Collins

that suddenly unnerved them?
    Carla’s shoulders drooped. Didn’t they think she’d lost enough?
    With a sigh, she pulled the diary from her purse. For all the emotional weight of it, she was amazed at its lightness. She gazed at the now faded yellow daisies on its cover, remembering. Inside that cover years ago she’d drawn a heart containing the words “Carla Radling loves Scott Cambry.”
    Scott. Even now her heart panged at the mere thought of his name.
    She turned the diary over, rubbing a thumb against the fabric. The words inside contained the culmination of her life as a teenager — her dreams, her soaring hopes. Her crushed spirit. Everything she was today — and was not — had been forged within the glowing heat of its pages. The thought of reliving those terrible moments now, tonight, after all she’d already been through, filled her with dread.
    Yeah, well. Watching TV isn’t exactly a picker upper either.
    She laid the diary on the nightstand.
    Carla sat up and arranged the two pillows against the headboard. Then peeled down the bedspread, slipping it beneath her body, and balled it up as elevation for her left foot. She leaned back against the pillows, doing her best to find a comfortable position. Then with a deep breath, she picked up the diary and opened her soul to the summer when it all began. When she was sixteen — and met him for the first time.

THIRTEEN
    Can you believe it — I got a job for the summer! And what a job! I’ll be working as a clerk/assistant for Bryson Hanley! Yes, the Bryson Hanley!
    Mom tried to bring me down as usual. Said who was I, getting so uppity that I should think I can keep a job in a state senator’s office. Said I’d type letters full of mistakes and file documents that would never be found. Isn’t she just the Carla cheerleading squad. Got herself new pom-poms and everything.
    Just because I don’t want to spend my life waitressing in some dirt-crusted, smoky little diner.
    Anyway, the job. I don’t know much about politics, but I learned a lot just this afternoon from Paul Jilke, this serious-looking, long-faced guy who runs Senator Hanley’s campaign office. (He reminds me of a Muppet. Jilke, I mean.) Senator Hanley is a Democrat, “representing Washington District #1,” Jilke told me (I’d better not call him that to his face), and the state legislature has finished meeting for the year. So now Senator Hanley’s back from Olympia, working at his real estate development stuff in Terrin. But what he’s really focusing on is his 1992 run for the US Senate. And that’s where I come in — as an “aide” for his campaign. Is that cool or what! I’ll be doing mailings and general office work. I really impressed Jilke because I can type ninety words a minute. (Who’d have guessed old Mrs. Delligouser’s typing class would actually amount to something?)
    First thing I did when I heard I got the job was run all the way to Mary Kay’s house to tell her. She jumped up and down with me. Mary Kay knows how much I need the money. For once I’ll be able to buy some decent clothes. Act like somebody. I’m tired of looking like the old worn country girl with an emphysemic mother and no dad. Not that my real friends care, but it would be nice to show the Snooty High Societies a thing or two in my junior year.
    I spent an hour telling Mary Kay about the office and Jilke and my own little desk in the corner. I swear I sat in that chair and felt so grown-up. Kind of like the first time I held my driver’s license in my hand. Suddenly I’d jumped into another era. Sixteen going on twenty-five. Out in the world, with nobody to tell me what to do. And a real job .
    Jilke and I share a space that’s just next door to Senator Han-ley’s own huge private suite. We don’t even have to walk down the hall to see him — there’s a door that leads straight from his office into ours.
    I told Mary Kay about meeting Senator Hanley. But I couldn’t bring myself to