Read Online By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters - Free Book Online Page B

possible, you slide a plastic bag over your head and secure it with a belt. That way if the drugs don’t do their job—if they take too long or you panic—suffocation will render you unconscious.
    Even if I had access to my pills, I couldn’t get enough of them down my damaged throat now.
    Into a trash bag goes my slim stack of clothes and toys and the gilded jewelry box that Kim got me for my twelfth birthday. She asked, “Do you want to invite some friends over for cake and ice cream?” I said, “No.” I thought, Please don’t make me. The one time she listened. She said, “Okay, then. It’ll just be the three of us.”
    The music box plays “A Time for Us.” Ironic.
    Maybe I won’t throw it out yet.
    The book is still in the trash can by the desk. How could I be so stupid? What if Kim found it and read the message? She wouldn’t understand, but she’d spend a lifetime trying.
    That could be her penance.
    No, I’m not that cruel. I rip out the first page and bury it in the Glad bag.
    We have chorus rehearsal today for the May Day concert. I won’t be around for it, but I committed to chorus. I’m all about commitment.
    JenniferJessica keeps pushing me, nudging me, pressing her shoulder against mine. I want to tell her to cool it. Then the other girl on the left side of me starts doing the same thing.
    I move back and the girl behind me pushes me forward. They always come in packs of three.
    Mr. Hyatt stops rehearsal. “What’s going on?” he asks.
    JenniferJessica says, “Nothing.”
    I say nothing, of course.
    He purses his lips. The rehearsal resumes and so does the pushing. I want to scream, Stop it! Stop touching me. In this one middle school, people would shove me or push me in the hall. I wanted to chase them down and shove them so hard they fell on their faces. But then I’d get in trouble or they’d retaliate. In class, this one boy sat next to me and poked me in the arm. Just poked me. He’d press his finger into my skin until it made a dent. Why? Boys were always being pushed into me. They stuck notes on my back: KISS ME.
    PIGGY BACK.
    JenniferJessica pushes me out of line.
    Mr. Hyatt motions for the pianist to cut. He says, “Daelyn, would you mind singing alto?”
    Am I supposed to answer?
    JenniferJessica snorts. Everyone around us snickers and the roar in my ears crescendos.
    I shuffle over to the alto section. The joke’s on you, bitches. I sing alto.
    “You can stand by me,” a voice says. It’s the girl from econ. She has a face now. A face and a voice. Round face. Soft voice.
    “We can share music.”
    I feel grateful. STOP. Don’t feel.
    He’s not on my bench. I don’t mean “my.” Nothing belongs to me. I close the gate and walk past the tree. He doesn’t leap out to ambush me.
    You have no idea how relieved I am.
    I sit and set my book bag next to me; pull out Desire on the Moor . Exhuming the weight of the day, my bones go Jell-O and my muscles melt. I read, Maggie Louise took the outstretched hand that the Frenchman, Jean-Jacques, offered her. She was a deft horsewoman, but if a man—this man—wanted to help her dismount, she certainly wouldn’t refuse the offer.
    Santana’s plotting a sneak attack, I think. Waiting until I’m engaged in my book, then WHAM.
    I’m so wise to sneak attacks. It won’t happen to me again.
    I just called him by his name.
    Detach.
    “Do you wish me to cool your mare down, Miss?” Jean-Jacques crooned in his sexy French accent. He took the reins from her, touching her fingers lightly with his gloved hand. She’d never known a stable boy to wear leather gloves. Soft, creamy kidskin. If the gloves hadn’t given him away, his impeccable manners and grooming would have. “Who are you?” she asked. “Really.”
    He’d introduced himself as the trainer at Longshead, but Jean-Jacques was no stable boy.
    I suppress a yawn. It hurts to yawn. Especially in the back of my throat where the stitched skin catches. He’s late, if he’s