Read Online You've Been Warned by James Patterson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Patterson
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that’s happening.
Leaping from the curb, I hear tires screeching and feel the hot breezes kicked up from the asphalt by one near collision after another. The huge chrome grille of a bus misses me by less than a foot. “What the hell is your problem, lady?” yells the driver out his window.
You have no idea.
“Please, Dad! Please stop!” I yell.
“Daddy — please!”
And just like that, the gray coat comes to a halt. My father turns on the sidewalk, and our eyes meet. We’re maybe fifty feet apart.
“I want to help you,” he says. “But you have to do it yourself.”
“Dad, what’s happening to me?”
“Be careful, Kristin.”
I open my mouth to ask, Why? How? What is it that I have to do? but he takes off again before the words can form.
I cave in to my emotions, collapsing to the pavement. My palms are skinned raw as they break the fall. I look up helplessly and catch a final glimpse of his head disappearing around the next corner.
Meanwhile, people form a circle around me, watching and wondering what my problem is. I know that look. I’ve
given
that look.
They think I’m crazy.
“You don’t understand!” I tell them, tell anyone who’ll listen or even stare down at me with a look of disdain. “You don’t understand!”
My father’s been dead for twelve years.
Chapter 32
ANYWAY, AFTER SEEING my dead father, I can’t get home fast enough, though it’s the very place I had to escape from less than an hour ago.
In the cab back to my building, all I do is stare at my camera and wonder about the film inside. I squeezed off three, maybe four shots of my father. I can’t remember exactly.
But all I need is one.
What’s scarier — that it’s really him or that it’s all in my head?
Practically busting through the front door to my apartment, I make a beeline for the darkroom. And hopefully some answers.
“Hurry up!” I implore the film as it stews in the processing tank. “Move it!” I think this is the only time I wish I owned one of those instant cameras.
I’m so single-minded about getting these shots developed that for a few minutes I don’t pay the slightest attention to what’s all around me. Pinned to the corkboard walls are the pictures from the Fálcon, a morbid exhibit if there ever was one.
But once I notice them, I can’t keep from looking at them.
Bad idea.
Also, on one corkboard are some old shots from my days growing up in Concord, Massachusetts. My mother, my father, my two sisters. And one shot of my boyfriend from college, Matthew, with his head cropped off — which is so richly deserved.
“Hurry up!”
I yell again at the developing film.
Finally, there’s something to see.
I pull up one of the shots, staring hard at the image. The gray coat, the hunched-over posture — the man whose casket I saw lowered into the ground back home with my own eyes.
It’s my father.
My eyes tear up as I grab another shot and then another, poring over every detail.
Suddenly, it’s as if I’m chasing him all over again. I’m out of breath, my chest burning. The room feels as though it’s caving in, and I reach out for the wall to steady myself.
So this is what a panic attack feels like. . . .
Desperate for air, I flee the darkroom, and when that’s not enough, I run around opening all the windows in my apartment.
I try to breathe normally, but I can’t.
C’mon, Kristin, keep it together. Somehow, some way, this has to start making sense. You just have to find the organizing principle.
It
wasn’t
my father, I tell myself, just someone who looks like him. Maybe someone’s trying to mess with my mind. It’s got to be something like that.
Christ, how insanely paranoid can I get? Someone messing with my mind? Who?
Out of nowhere, a sharp pain shoots straight up from my feet. My thighs and calves are throbbing, and I can’t stand it anymore. Not any of this.
Balling my hands into fists, I begin to pound at my legs. I’m literally beating myself
Leaping from the curb, I hear tires screeching and feel the hot breezes kicked up from the asphalt by one near collision after another. The huge chrome grille of a bus misses me by less than a foot. “What the hell is your problem, lady?” yells the driver out his window.
You have no idea.
“Please, Dad! Please stop!” I yell.
“Daddy — please!”
And just like that, the gray coat comes to a halt. My father turns on the sidewalk, and our eyes meet. We’re maybe fifty feet apart.
“I want to help you,” he says. “But you have to do it yourself.”
“Dad, what’s happening to me?”
“Be careful, Kristin.”
I open my mouth to ask, Why? How? What is it that I have to do? but he takes off again before the words can form.
I cave in to my emotions, collapsing to the pavement. My palms are skinned raw as they break the fall. I look up helplessly and catch a final glimpse of his head disappearing around the next corner.
Meanwhile, people form a circle around me, watching and wondering what my problem is. I know that look. I’ve
given
that look.
They think I’m crazy.
“You don’t understand!” I tell them, tell anyone who’ll listen or even stare down at me with a look of disdain. “You don’t understand!”
My father’s been dead for twelve years.
Chapter 32
ANYWAY, AFTER SEEING my dead father, I can’t get home fast enough, though it’s the very place I had to escape from less than an hour ago.
In the cab back to my building, all I do is stare at my camera and wonder about the film inside. I squeezed off three, maybe four shots of my father. I can’t remember exactly.
But all I need is one.
What’s scarier — that it’s really him or that it’s all in my head?
Practically busting through the front door to my apartment, I make a beeline for the darkroom. And hopefully some answers.
“Hurry up!” I implore the film as it stews in the processing tank. “Move it!” I think this is the only time I wish I owned one of those instant cameras.
I’m so single-minded about getting these shots developed that for a few minutes I don’t pay the slightest attention to what’s all around me. Pinned to the corkboard walls are the pictures from the Fálcon, a morbid exhibit if there ever was one.
But once I notice them, I can’t keep from looking at them.
Bad idea.
Also, on one corkboard are some old shots from my days growing up in Concord, Massachusetts. My mother, my father, my two sisters. And one shot of my boyfriend from college, Matthew, with his head cropped off — which is so richly deserved.
“Hurry up!”
I yell again at the developing film.
Finally, there’s something to see.
I pull up one of the shots, staring hard at the image. The gray coat, the hunched-over posture — the man whose casket I saw lowered into the ground back home with my own eyes.
It’s my father.
My eyes tear up as I grab another shot and then another, poring over every detail.
Suddenly, it’s as if I’m chasing him all over again. I’m out of breath, my chest burning. The room feels as though it’s caving in, and I reach out for the wall to steady myself.
So this is what a panic attack feels like. . . .
Desperate for air, I flee the darkroom, and when that’s not enough, I run around opening all the windows in my apartment.
I try to breathe normally, but I can’t.
C’mon, Kristin, keep it together. Somehow, some way, this has to start making sense. You just have to find the organizing principle.
It
wasn’t
my father, I tell myself, just someone who looks like him. Maybe someone’s trying to mess with my mind. It’s got to be something like that.
Christ, how insanely paranoid can I get? Someone messing with my mind? Who?
Out of nowhere, a sharp pain shoots straight up from my feet. My thighs and calves are throbbing, and I can’t stand it anymore. Not any of this.
Balling my hands into fists, I begin to pound at my legs. I’m literally beating myself
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