Read Online Deeper We Fall by Chelsea M. Cameron - Free Book Online

voice was just what I needed, singing about the carousel we all ride on, and how it goes up and down. Can’t go back, just forward. I burst from the dorm and took off, looking for the first trail into the woods I could find.
    I didn’t have to go too far before I could veer off the straight dark pavement and onto the uneven ground of a trail. The trees swallowed me up as Joni’s voice devoured my ears, blocking out everything except the pounding of my feet, the sound of my breath and the beat of my heart.
    I stopped chanting her name in my head and thought just about moving my body forward, keeping it going.
    It started to rain, but I kept going. Rain never bothered me. My hair streamed in front of my eyes, but I pushed it away and ran harder, my feet splashing against the increasingly wet ground. Lungs screaming, heart racing, I kept going.
    From Joni to The Lumineers to Matchbox 20 to Ella Fitzgerald to Crowded House to Imagine Dragons.
    Words and notes and songs, all played with the background of my heart. I welcomed the pain of my lungs, of my legs, of my body. It meant that I could still feel something, it meant I was still human, still living.
    The ground was slick with rain, so my footing wasn’t as sure as it normally was, and I went down hard. I rolled over onto my back and watched the rain fall, letting it slap my face and run into my mouth and down my cheeks. Putting my arms out, I begged for the rain to somehow wash me away. Wash the last two years away. Wash away the memories and all the shit that happened until I was back to the way I’d been.
    Closing my eyes, I wished for something that couldn’t happen.
    After a moment or an hour, I sat up. My lungs were almost back to normal, but my muscles were burning and twitching. Good.
    I had to go back to my room, but all I wanted to do was keep running until the woods ran out. I wondered where that would take me. If I could drive, I would have been long gone. I would have taken Zack’s truck, drained my measly bank account, taken a box of records, the player, my grandfather’s lighter and his favorite hat and hit the road. Never looking back. Putting as many miles as I could between me and Seaport.
    After the accident, I could never bring myself to get my driver’s license. I would have had to go through driver’s ed, and that was sort of impossible while I was at Carter, since I didn’t have a lot of free time for something like that. Whenever I thought about getting behind the wheel, my blood crystalized into ice and I couldn’t swallow. Zack made fun of me and said I was a fucking pussy, but that didn’t change the fact that even thinking about driving scared the shit out of me more than anything else. Almost anything else.
    I wiped the rain from my eyes. I was absolutely covered in mud. I should go back to the dorm, shower and figure out what the hell I was going to do to get through the next few months of my life, but I got up and kept running down the trail. I wanted to see where it ended up.
     
    Lottie
     
    Twice in twenty-four hours. I should have been holding onto myself, rocking in a corner or something. I was far from okay, but having my brother and Simon around was like holding onto two helium balloons that wouldn’t let me descend into the depths of despair.
    It was an effort not to punch him as he walked past me that morning. I wanted to punch the stare right off of his face, even if I’d need a step stool to do it. I imagined doing exactly that, but by the time I’d decided to do it, he’d walked past me and I wasn’t going to say his vile name out loud.
    I didn’t tell Will or Simon about seeing Zan the second time. They were already riled up as it was, and I didn’t want them doing anything stupid. So I shoved it aside, put on a happy face like I’d done so many times before and went about my day, trying to get acclimated to a place that felt like it was a foreign country.
    There were voices coming from my room when I got back