Read Online Wash Me Away by Wendy Owens - Free Book Online Page B

of someone else,” I insist.
    She bites the inside of her cheek, watching me for a moment before continuing, “Kathleen Clark? She married Thomas Buckley, right?”
    I press my body back into the beanbag chair, turning my head toward the ceiling. My stomach slips from one side to the other as the room shifts around me. “Nobody ever told me.” My breathing is slow and steady. I stare at a spot on the ceiling. I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t understand. Why would nobody tell me about this?
    “Apparently it was a huge scandal around here,” Julia gladly continues with the ancient morsels of gossip. “My mom said she was practically engaged to your uncle when she left for spring break. She met your dad the first night they got there. Mom said she barely saw her the rest of the trip, and that was it.”
    “What do you mean ‘that was it’?”
    “She came home, split up with your uncle, and then after graduation she ran off with your dad. It sounded like a pretty epic romance. Your grandfather said if she left, then she shouldn’t come back. I mean, can you imagine? Loving someone so much that you would give up everything you know to be with them?”
    I don’t answer. I’m still trying to wrap my mind about her tale that sounds more like a work of fiction than any recollection of my parents’ past. The man I called Daddy was a monster. He couldn’t have been the same person in Julia’s story. My grandfather died of a heart attack when I was ten, but Daddy wouldn’t let me go to the funeral. I met my grandmother over the summer. She has Alzheimer’s and resides in a local, full-time care facility. She calls me Kathleen whenever we go to see her.
    What do I know about my life? There are so many pieces, and nobody around me seems eager to share any of them with me. Julia knows more about my family past than I do. There’s a pain in my chest. A muffled sound in my ears. I realize Julia is speaking again. I don’t hear what she says. I think I might vomit.
    I jump up without looking at my friend. “I gotta go.” There’s no hesitation, as I dart for the door. All I know is that I have to be anywhere else but here right now.

I RACE DOWN THE WOODEN steps of the oldest dorm at Burton Academy. The noises all around me echo, rattling inside my head. A chair screeches against the floor somewhere, the clicking of my own shoes against each stair, the shouts outside of boys playing in the yard growing louder and then fading with each window I pass. A popping noise sounds in my head as I realize I haven’t taken a breath since I began my descent. The walls are shifting, swaying from side to side. I can see the exit just at the bottom of the flight of stairs. The door is propped open to allow a breeze in, though there never seems to be one.
    I escape into the openness of the outdoors, gasping for breath; I cringe as a horrid coppery taste enters my mouth. I’m going to puke. I rush to the nearest bushes and relieve my stomach of its contents. I don’t move; for a moment I stand there, eyes closed, unsure if I have an audience, and wait for the rocking to subside in my head. At last the swaying stops.
    As I open my eyes, I expect someone to be standing nearby, but much to my relief I’m alone. I’m comfortable with alone. I tug at the hem of my shirt, wipe away a small trail of vomit from the corner of my mouth, and take off in a sprint toward the trail that leads to the Mountain Campus.
    World History is next, but Professor Blake will have to understand. Hell, he’s married to my shrink, so it seems like I’ve got a built in doctor’s note with him. Questions race through my mind about Uncle Gil, about my mother, and my eyes are focused on the ground as if the answers are hidden on the earth, and I’ll find them with the next step.
    My rapid breathing stops as my body slams into something, or perhaps it’s someone I see as I spin out of control. I fall to the ground with a thud. I snort wildly,