Read Online Third Degree by Julie Cross - Free Book Online
Authors: Julie Cross
Tags: Romance, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Women, Women's Fiction, New Adult & College
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too, and realize that it was a huge mistake to reject me.
I’ll be able to keep going if even one of those things happens.
I look at my dad again, my eyes probably pleading for help. “What now? What are your plans?”
His plans, Mom’s plans … I want him or my mom to answer ridiculous questions that shouldn’t even be crossing my mind, like Is Mom going to change her last name back to her maiden name? If she does, will I still be Jenkins? Will I have a room at your place or Mom’s? Where are you going to live? Where am I going to live?
It’s like I’m four years old again, sitting alone in the corner of my foster family’s living room while they all squeeze onto the couch, posing for a holiday card photo—a mom, a dad, a brother, and a sister. And me, the weird little girl in the corner who has a battered copy of A Wrinkle in Time spread across her lap. She pretends to be completely fine with her isolation, andif she’d said something, the family probably would have taken the photo in secret, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s learned that the quieter she is, the more independent, the longer she gets to stay in one house.
Internalizing everything is not something I’ve had to do in years, but I think I’m headed down that road again. If I don’t go back to NIU and face Marshall’s babysitting and my shared room with Kelsey, I’ll be sentencing myself to sit around for six months and contemplate how weird I am, how different, how alone in my world I am, and how I have no genetic connection to my parents. Or anyone else that’s alive, at least that I know of. And now my parents are about to sever the one connection they have—marriage. Unless I count as another binding ingredient, bridging them together?
I release a shaky breath and pull myself together before saying to my dad, “I’m gonna go see Mom at work and then head back to DeKalb and you can continue all your secret divorce plans. It’ll be much easier with me out of the way.”
Jesus Christ, I don’t want to go back. But if it’s a choice between facing Kelsey and a great deal of resident advisor humiliation or having a front-row seat to watch my family fall apart … this is the easiest decision I’ve had to make in a long time.
“Isabel,” Dad says, reaching for me before I can take off.
I shake out of his grip and turn my back to him. “Just let me deal with this my own way, okay?”
Luckily, he doesn’t argue, and I escape before I’m forced to explain my childish views on this divorce. But choosing to go back to the humiliation and failure I literally fled from this morning, rather than stay here and watch more rooms in my house become empty, is like being asked to choose which disease I’d rather have. Smallpox or whooping cough? TB or hepatitis C? Cancer or heart disease?
I could come up with lists of pros and cons and conclude with a preference, but that doesn’t change the fact that all the options suck.
Chapter 7
@IsabelJenkinsMD: There are many things they don’t teach in medical school.
The chat with my mom went a lot like the one with my dad—me asking why but not really asking. Not really wanting to know whose fault this is, who hates whom. Logically someone has to be more wrong than the other, right?
Either way, I returned to school before dinnertime and cleaned myself up, all the while avoiding running into Kelsey or Marshall. Now Kelsey’s studying in our room and I’ve taken up residence in the common room, throwing darts for the last two hours. I’m hitting the board every time now, but nowhere near the bull’s-eye. Dr. O’Reilly, the chief of surgery, had a point when he claimed that my practical surgical skills were lacking the superiority of my textbook knowledge and rote memory.
I reposition my hips and feet, hoping the adjustment in angle will help me get closer to the center of the target. If I can’t get a dart to hit a red and yellow circle only fifteen feet away, how can I
I’ll be able to keep going if even one of those things happens.
I look at my dad again, my eyes probably pleading for help. “What now? What are your plans?”
His plans, Mom’s plans … I want him or my mom to answer ridiculous questions that shouldn’t even be crossing my mind, like Is Mom going to change her last name back to her maiden name? If she does, will I still be Jenkins? Will I have a room at your place or Mom’s? Where are you going to live? Where am I going to live?
It’s like I’m four years old again, sitting alone in the corner of my foster family’s living room while they all squeeze onto the couch, posing for a holiday card photo—a mom, a dad, a brother, and a sister. And me, the weird little girl in the corner who has a battered copy of A Wrinkle in Time spread across her lap. She pretends to be completely fine with her isolation, andif she’d said something, the family probably would have taken the photo in secret, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s learned that the quieter she is, the more independent, the longer she gets to stay in one house.
Internalizing everything is not something I’ve had to do in years, but I think I’m headed down that road again. If I don’t go back to NIU and face Marshall’s babysitting and my shared room with Kelsey, I’ll be sentencing myself to sit around for six months and contemplate how weird I am, how different, how alone in my world I am, and how I have no genetic connection to my parents. Or anyone else that’s alive, at least that I know of. And now my parents are about to sever the one connection they have—marriage. Unless I count as another binding ingredient, bridging them together?
I release a shaky breath and pull myself together before saying to my dad, “I’m gonna go see Mom at work and then head back to DeKalb and you can continue all your secret divorce plans. It’ll be much easier with me out of the way.”
Jesus Christ, I don’t want to go back. But if it’s a choice between facing Kelsey and a great deal of resident advisor humiliation or having a front-row seat to watch my family fall apart … this is the easiest decision I’ve had to make in a long time.
“Isabel,” Dad says, reaching for me before I can take off.
I shake out of his grip and turn my back to him. “Just let me deal with this my own way, okay?”
Luckily, he doesn’t argue, and I escape before I’m forced to explain my childish views on this divorce. But choosing to go back to the humiliation and failure I literally fled from this morning, rather than stay here and watch more rooms in my house become empty, is like being asked to choose which disease I’d rather have. Smallpox or whooping cough? TB or hepatitis C? Cancer or heart disease?
I could come up with lists of pros and cons and conclude with a preference, but that doesn’t change the fact that all the options suck.
Chapter 7
@IsabelJenkinsMD: There are many things they don’t teach in medical school.
The chat with my mom went a lot like the one with my dad—me asking why but not really asking. Not really wanting to know whose fault this is, who hates whom. Logically someone has to be more wrong than the other, right?
Either way, I returned to school before dinnertime and cleaned myself up, all the while avoiding running into Kelsey or Marshall. Now Kelsey’s studying in our room and I’ve taken up residence in the common room, throwing darts for the last two hours. I’m hitting the board every time now, but nowhere near the bull’s-eye. Dr. O’Reilly, the chief of surgery, had a point when he claimed that my practical surgical skills were lacking the superiority of my textbook knowledge and rote memory.
I reposition my hips and feet, hoping the adjustment in angle will help me get closer to the center of the target. If I can’t get a dart to hit a red and yellow circle only fifteen feet away, how can I
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