Read Online By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Julie Anne Peters
Tags: Fiction - Young Adult
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populating as I watch. Four, five, six. People must live in different time zones or something. Eight, nine. Live and die.
Secrets. I can’t take them with me. If I do, when I go, when I arrive at my final destination, I’ll be . . . impure. I have no choice but to trust that they’re safe here.
I touch Final Forum .
Bullied.
I key, “I wasn’t the only fat kid in school. There were others. They got bullied too. This one kid, a fifth grader, brought a knife to school and had a wack attack, just yelling and threatening people. It happened on the playground at lunch. He got expelled. I heard rumors that he moved, then killed himself.”
J_Doe050881 writes: You try to take on the tormentors. But there are always more where they came from.
Exactly. So your only other choice is to take out the tormented.
This other girl was a cutter, I remember. She was in my reading class. I could see the scabs on her arms. At ten, she was already cutting.
At ten, I was planning my death.
An alarm clock buzzes upstairs and I power down. The sun’s up. A new day is beginning. Or ending, depending on where you are.
Already I’m exhausted. I rest my forehead on the desk, but it stretches the back of my neck and that hurts. I turn my head. There’s the note.
Secret note from Hervé. He’d said, “Did you get it?” Before he forced this note on me.
I get up and retrieve my book bag from the rocking chair. I open the front pocket where he’d slipped Desire in the Mist . What did Hervé leave in it, a rat turd?
Inside the front cover, printed in blue ink, is one word: hervehotsu .
What is that? Portuguese? Hervehotsu. Stupid. It’s like a screen name.
A screen name. HerveHotsU.
I throw the book in the trash.
The shower goes on upstairs and footsteps creak in the hall. Watching. Always watching. I snatch the note and take it with me to the bathroom.
On the toilet, I dig out the flaps and unfold the wedge of note. In black pen, like calligraphy, elegant letters centered on the page:
IM me
The last time I got baited into IMing, people wrote nasty, hurtful messages.
I won’t set myself up again.
I tear the note to bits and flush it.
School is school. I dreamwalk down the halls. I pass the time wishing I was gone. We get our tests back in econ and I got a D-. A red scrawl under the grade reads: See me after class .
For what? Confession? Why did Kim and Chip pick a Catholic school? I don’t even believe in God.
My test is snatched off my desk. This girl sitting next to me covers my paper with her arm and does something. Writes on it. When the teacher isn’t looking, she slides the test back onto my desk.
She’d extended the legs of the D to make it look like an A . A- .
She’s smiling.
At me.
Why?
The bell rings and I’m the first one out the door. I hustle to the restroom. In a stall, I rip the test into shreds and cram them into the used tampons container.
Don’t touch me.
He’s there after school sitting on the bench with his arms resting across the back. My stomach flips. STOP.
Why? Why are people making contact NOW?
I retreat into the building, into the bowels of hell.
He needs to go. They all do. They need to know I’m not doing this with them.
— 13 DAYS —
Trash day. I keep a box of Glad bags behind the bottom drawer of my dresser. I hope Kim doesn’t pull out the drawer. My clothes are sparse. I have underpants, socks, a bra. I’ve never owned much, since we move so often. I don’t care about keeping stuff. I spread what little I have evenly between all four drawers. Behind the fourth drawer are my plastic bags.
Kim didn’t even think about locking them away. Heads up, Kim.
Plastic bags are a suicide completer’s best friend. Especially if you choose to overdose. Drug overdose is an unreliable method, I read, because height and weight, general health, gag reflex—all of these work against you. On Through-the-Light it’s recommended that, in addition to taking as many pills as
Secrets. I can’t take them with me. If I do, when I go, when I arrive at my final destination, I’ll be . . . impure. I have no choice but to trust that they’re safe here.
I touch Final Forum .
Bullied.
I key, “I wasn’t the only fat kid in school. There were others. They got bullied too. This one kid, a fifth grader, brought a knife to school and had a wack attack, just yelling and threatening people. It happened on the playground at lunch. He got expelled. I heard rumors that he moved, then killed himself.”
J_Doe050881 writes: You try to take on the tormentors. But there are always more where they came from.
Exactly. So your only other choice is to take out the tormented.
This other girl was a cutter, I remember. She was in my reading class. I could see the scabs on her arms. At ten, she was already cutting.
At ten, I was planning my death.
An alarm clock buzzes upstairs and I power down. The sun’s up. A new day is beginning. Or ending, depending on where you are.
Already I’m exhausted. I rest my forehead on the desk, but it stretches the back of my neck and that hurts. I turn my head. There’s the note.
Secret note from Hervé. He’d said, “Did you get it?” Before he forced this note on me.
I get up and retrieve my book bag from the rocking chair. I open the front pocket where he’d slipped Desire in the Mist . What did Hervé leave in it, a rat turd?
Inside the front cover, printed in blue ink, is one word: hervehotsu .
What is that? Portuguese? Hervehotsu. Stupid. It’s like a screen name.
A screen name. HerveHotsU.
I throw the book in the trash.
The shower goes on upstairs and footsteps creak in the hall. Watching. Always watching. I snatch the note and take it with me to the bathroom.
On the toilet, I dig out the flaps and unfold the wedge of note. In black pen, like calligraphy, elegant letters centered on the page:
IM me
The last time I got baited into IMing, people wrote nasty, hurtful messages.
I won’t set myself up again.
I tear the note to bits and flush it.
School is school. I dreamwalk down the halls. I pass the time wishing I was gone. We get our tests back in econ and I got a D-. A red scrawl under the grade reads: See me after class .
For what? Confession? Why did Kim and Chip pick a Catholic school? I don’t even believe in God.
My test is snatched off my desk. This girl sitting next to me covers my paper with her arm and does something. Writes on it. When the teacher isn’t looking, she slides the test back onto my desk.
She’d extended the legs of the D to make it look like an A . A- .
She’s smiling.
At me.
Why?
The bell rings and I’m the first one out the door. I hustle to the restroom. In a stall, I rip the test into shreds and cram them into the used tampons container.
Don’t touch me.
He’s there after school sitting on the bench with his arms resting across the back. My stomach flips. STOP.
Why? Why are people making contact NOW?
I retreat into the building, into the bowels of hell.
He needs to go. They all do. They need to know I’m not doing this with them.
— 13 DAYS —
Trash day. I keep a box of Glad bags behind the bottom drawer of my dresser. I hope Kim doesn’t pull out the drawer. My clothes are sparse. I have underpants, socks, a bra. I’ve never owned much, since we move so often. I don’t care about keeping stuff. I spread what little I have evenly between all four drawers. Behind the fourth drawer are my plastic bags.
Kim didn’t even think about locking them away. Heads up, Kim.
Plastic bags are a suicide completer’s best friend. Especially if you choose to overdose. Drug overdose is an unreliable method, I read, because height and weight, general health, gag reflex—all of these work against you. On Through-the-Light it’s recommended that, in addition to taking as many pills as
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