Read Online Dust to Dust by Melissa Walker - Free Book Online

in a chilling wind.
    Although I can’t see Thatcher’s face clearly or his remarkably blue eyes, I sense his gaze turning serious, like he’s holding back his feelings so that he can tell me something important.
    â€œAre you off the pain meds completely?” he asks.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGood. Thank you.”
    â€œI got your message,” I say.
    â€œThat took a lot of energy. I had to go back to the Prism for a while after that.”
    â€œIt was a bold move,” I tell him. Thatcher, the consummate rulefollower, surely wasn’t supposed to scrawl something on a mirror for a living person to see. It’s a breach of worlds.
    I hear the conflict in his voice when he responds. “I had to do it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He doesn’t answer right away, but then he says, “Unclouded thinking is always best.”
    Thatcher sounds exactly like he did when we were in the Prism together, teaching me about things that I didn’t even know mattered, changing me forever.
    â€œIt’s strange. My mind is getting clearer, but what I’m remembering sometimes seems so unreal that I don’t trust myself.”
    â€œYou should. You’ve had good instincts from the beginning. You were more aware and alert than anyone else I’d ever worked with.”
    I feel a big twinge of insecurity when he says that, like we were just business partners or something, but that fades away when my thoughts wander back to the words I wrote in my journal, the ones I thought came from Thatcher: I’ll find them. I’ll protect you.
    I remember the fear I felt in the cemetery, and I have to ask him: “Thatcher, am I in danger?”
    â€œYou’re alive, and that means you’re safe.”
    â€œBut what about the polt—” I start.
    â€œCallie, you shouldn’t worry about anything that happened before. It’s best if you move forward, live today’s life.”
    Move forward . Does that mean he wants me to forget him?
    â€œI can’t.” It’s a whisper, soft and pleading, because the truth is that I don’t want to let go of him or our time together. I don’t want him to ask that of me.
    â€œYou can ,” he says. “That’s what I came here to tell you. I know you’ve been through a lot, more than anyone could ever imagine. But you have a real second chance, and I want you to embrace it and really live .” He pauses for a moment, and I can feel how reluctant he is to say what’s coming next. “Which is why you have to turn your back on everything you experienced while you were in a coma. Thinking about the Prism or me or anything else from that time is just going to interfere.”
    â€œI don’t understand. You told me to stop taking the pills and it made me remember more,” I say. “If you wanted me to forget, why did you—”
    â€œI wanted you to know that you weren’t crazy. That you didn’t hallucinate or imagine any of the things you saw. I didn’t think you’d be able to be true to yourself if you believed your mind was playing tricks on you.”
    I curl my legs into my chest and breath in deeply, letting the sweet air fill my lungs. I missed that when I was nearly dead, I realize. That feeling of my chest expanding and releasing a soothing sigh.
    â€œYou have no idea how remarkable you are.” Even though his shape is barely visible, Thatcher’s voice fills the corners of my room, nestling into the crevices of my bookshelf, enveloping the window seat and the bed, covering me like a blanket. “No one else has ever been to the Prism and returned to Earth like you did. Coma victims usually don’t come to the Prism—they linger on Earth until they dieor wake. But you . . . you’ve seen both sides.”
    â€œI have. So how can I forget what I saw? What I felt?”
    â€œWhat you felt?”
    He’s going to make me say it—make