Free Try Not to Breathe by Jennifer R. Hubbard

Harry.”
    “If you need to stop—”
    “I don’t. I’m fine.” She stared out the windshield, the wet smears drying on her face. “Keep going.”
    I watched them and knew I should feel something, but I felt nothing except the old hopelessness. Which I had no right to feel, because I was a healthy kid from a good family. A kid whose mother wouldn’t even slap him when he was stabbing her, a kid whose parents were bleeding money to send him to a place like Patterson.
    • • • • •

    “When you knew you were in trouble—why didn’t you talk to anybody?” Nicki asked.
    “Like who?”
    “Your parents?”
    “What was I gonna say? That I felt like I was behind glass? That would’ve made a lot of sense.”
    “If you told them you were thinking about killing yourself, I’m sure they would’ve been interested.”
    Her voice was full of common sense. I buried my face in my arms and breathed in. The couch smelled faintly like roses; the cleaning woman sprayed something on it every week that would probably give us cancer years from now.
    In spite of the sickly fabric-cleaner smell, I breathed in deep and slow, trying to hold off panic, the shudders that wanted to roll through me. I should’ve known what it would do to me to tell Nicki, how raw I would feel. The last time I’d told this story Val and Jake had had to glue me back together. I wasn’t at Patterson anymore; I couldn’t afford to break myself open like this. Why had I thought I could help Nicki, anyway?
    Nicki rested her hand on my back. “Are you okay?”
    “Yes.”
    “Seriously.”
    I turned my head so she could see my face. “Yes.”
    “I’m sorry I made you tell me that.”
    “You didn’t make me.”
    She frowned at the wall. “I’ve been pushing you to tell me.”
    “Did it help?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Did you get what you wanted?” I said.
    “I—I don’t know.”
    We stared at each other, the pupils small in her gray eyes, small in the light from the windows.
    • • • • •

    Nicki and I ended up outside, tossing a baseball back and forth. One of my old gloves fit her. The sky had paled to a nothing color, the dirty white of old socks. I wasn’t sure how we decided to start playing catch except that we needed a break, needed to pull back from what we’d said to each other.
    Nicki’s aim was okay, but her technique sucked. “Like this,” I told her, demonstrating. “No—bring your arm back like—are you watching?”
    She giggled and tried to balance the ball on her foot. “You don’t have to turn this into a lesson, Coach.”
    I shut up about her throwing. My parents used to do that—try to turn every blasted thing into a “learning experience.”
    “Unless you want me to give you volleyball lessons next,” she went on.
    “Volleyball?”
    “Yeah, I was the setter on my team last year. I bet I make varsity this fall, even though I’ll just be a sophomore.”
    The word “varsity” jabbed me in the stomach. I wondered whether I could’ve made the baseball team if I hadn’t been sick. And whether I would be able to play next spring, after missing a year. But all I said to Nicki was, “Come on, throw the ball.”
    The sky darkened, but the air didn’t cool off. “It’s so hot,” Nicki said as the ball went back and forth between us, smacking into our gloves. “If we keep this up, I’ll have to go back to the waterfall.”
    “Okay with me.”
    “It’s true what they say about you.” She laughed. “You do practically live up there.”
    My throw went a little wild; she lurched to catch it. “Who says what about me?”
    Her face flushed. “It’s just—people know you like to hang out up there. They’ve seen you. That’s how I knew where to find you.”
    She sent the ball back to me. I caught and held it. It had never occurred to me that she’d hunted for me on purpose. I’d always thought our meeting there had been an accident. “You came looking for me?”
    “Well, yeah.” She