By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Peters Julie Anne

Author:Peters, Julie Anne [Peters, Julie Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781613832202
Amazon: 1423130219
Publisher: Hyperion Book CH
Published: 2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

— 9 DAYS —

He’s waiting for me at the gate, which he’s never done. His arms are crossed and he looks pissed.

What?

I stand behind the gate and wait. He doesn’t move or speak. Fine.

I open the gate and he has to step out of my way as I come through. He says, “If you’re not going to communicate with me, I want my laptop back.”

I don’t respond.

“Come on,” he says, steepling his hands in a plea. “Please?”

His eyes are deep, dark blue, and it startles me to a stop. I can’t notice the color of his eyes. Ducking my head, I scuttle to the bench.

He says, “My last friend from around here moved to Germany, and everyone else in my long distance learning school lives out of state. I don’t know them anyway. I’m lonely.” He’s wearing flip-flops and his toenails are painted purple. I didn’t know boys painted their nails. I didn’t know they got lonely. But it explains why he’s talking to me, at least partly.

He stands there and I take the laptop out of my bag.

“Does it work okay?” he asks. “Do you need me to come over and install anything?”

I hand it to him, but he won’t take it.

“You said you need it for ten days, so I’m keeping track. Why ten days?”

When I sigh wearily, he collapses on the ground at my feet, bending one knee to his chest and looping an arm around it.

He has facial fuzz, kind of sketchy looking. He’s cute—for a dork. Too cute for me. I clench the laptop to my chest and close up inside, like the clam I am.

“Did you get my IM?”

I don’t know why I’m trembling and my breathing is uneven. With shaky hands, I exchange the laptop for my book. I open to chapter thirteen. Maggie Louise tapped lightly on Jean-Jacques’s door. At this hour, midnight, the manor was alive with noises of the night. The grandfather clock ticking in the parlor; a breeze off the moor clattering a loose shutter; ghosts of roomers swirling up the staircase and clashing in the hall. Maggie Louise’s senses were heightened, and when Jean-Jacques opened the door, all her desires awakened.

Maggie Louise would never allow herself to be violated.

He lets go of his leg and peers off to the side.

Look, I think. I didn’t ask you to come here. I don’t care if your feelings are hurt or you’re disappointed, or you think you can’t even attract a fat, ugly, mute girl.

I don’t care. I don’t care.

“I have Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” he says.

My breath catches. Isn’t that cancer?

“I was in remission and thought I had it beat, then right before my last follow-up, I found a lump.”

He’s making this up.

“Relapses almost always occur within the first two years. Almost. Always …” His voice trails away.

I’m not looking at him, even though the sun is shining on his face and glistening in his hair. His head falls back and his toes stretch up. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me.

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