Free The Pact by Jodi Picoult Page A

like the swimming star who'd swum a two-minute butterfly last year. Kate felt a pang in her chest, and silently swore to let Chris have the bathroom first every morning. All those times she'd screamed at him to “Drop dead,” and look at how close he had come.
    “Hey,” Kate said, and she was embarrassed to see that her voice trembled. She glanced over her shoulder, but to her surprise her mother had disappeared. “How are you feeling?” Chris shrugged. “Like shit,” he said.
    Kate bit her lip, trying to remember what her mother had said. Cheer him up. Don't discuss Emily. Make small talk. “We, uh, we won our soccer game.”
    Chris lifted flat, dull eyes to her. He did not say a word but he did not have to. Emily's dead, Kate, he was sneering. You think 1 care about your stupid game?
    “I scored three goals,” Kate stammered. Maybe if she didn't face him . .. She turned toward the window, which overlooked the incinerator, spitting out thick black smoke. “God,” she breathed. “I wouldn't give this view to someone who's suicidal.”
    Chris made a sound; Kate whirled around and clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh. I wasn't supposed to say that...” she muttered, and then she realized Chris was smiling. She had made him smile.
    “What'd they tell you to talk to me about?” Chris asked.
    Kate sat down on the edge of the bed. “Anything to make you happy,” she admitted.
    “What would make me happy,” he said, “is knowing when the funeral's going to be.”
    “Monday,” Kate said, leaning back on her elbows, relaxing in this new, tentative trust. “But I'm absolutely, positively not supposed to tell you that.”
    Chris let a slow smile painfully stretch his face. “Don't worry,” he said. “I won't hold it against you.”
    When Gus AND James entered Chris's room on Monday morning, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in an ill fitting pair of blue chinos and the shirt he'd been wearing on Friday night. The bloodstains had been rinsed out, but lingered in the fabric like ghosts, shifting pink beneath the fluorescent lights. The gauze wrapping his head had been traded for a small butterfly bandage at his brow. His hair was damp, neatly combed. “Good,” he said, coming to his feet. “Let's go.” Gus stopped. “Go where?”
    “To the funeral,” Chris said. “You didn't plan to leave me here?” Gus and James exchanged a look. That was exactly what they had been planning, at the recommendation of the adolescent psychiatric ward doctors, who had debated the pro of letting Chris grieve versus the con of touching a very raw nerve and reminding him that with Emily gone, he didn't want to be alive. Gus cleared her throat. “Em's funeral isn't today.” Chris looked at her dark dress, at his father's civilian clothes. “I suppose you're going out dancing,” he said. He came toward them with jerky, uncoordinated movements. “Kate told me,” he explained.
    “And I'm going.”
    “Honey,” Gus said, reaching for his arm, “the doctors don't think this is a very good idea.”
    “Fuck the doctors, Mom,” he said, his voice cracking. He threw off her touch. “I want to see her. Before I can't see her ever again.”
    “Chris,” James said, “Emily's gone. Best put it behind you and get yourself healed.”
    “Just like that?” Chris said, his words spinning higher, like threads of glass. “So if Mom died and you were stuck in the hospital the day of her funeral and the doctors told you that you were too sick to leave, you'd just roll over and go back to sleep?”
    “It's not the same,” James said. “It's not like you have a broken leg.” Chris rounded on them. “Why don't you just say it?” he yelled. “You think I'm going to watch Em get buried and throw myself off the nearest cliff!”
    “The day you're released, we can go to the cemetery,” Gus promised.
    “You can't keep me here,” Chris said, stalking to the door. James jumped up and grabbed his shoulders; he swatted