Free There You'll Find Me by Jenny B Jones

what I like to see. Cathleen, you can shout all you like, but Finley is welcome to stay. In fact, I’m prescribing it.”
    “You can’t prescribe anything,” Mrs. Sweeney said. “You’re not a doctor, sure yer not.”
    “Then I’ll get him to write an order. You ladies have a fine day.” Whistling to herself, Nurse Belinda sauntered out, closing the door behind her.
    With her lips pressed tight enough to vacuum seal, Mrs. Sweeney stared at me from her bed.
    On the wall the third hand of a clock ticked off the seconds, reminding both of us time was slipping away. Time in that day. And in our two lives.
    “If it’s any consolation,” I said after a moment, “this went much better in my head.”
    Those eagle eyes didn’t even blink.
    “I, um, I’m sorry. I don’t deal well with stress.”
    She harrumph ed and deflated into her pillows. “Get us a drink of water.”
    At least she was acknowledging me. “Yes, ma’am.” I walked to her side table and poured from a pink pitcher with her last name written on it in rushed, uneven letters.
    She took the cup from my hand, shaking as she lifted it to her cracked, gray lips.
    I returned to my seat and opened the book. “‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’” And as the seconds stretched out like warm taffy, I read for the longest thirty minutes of my life.
    By the time I stuck a bookmark between the pages and shut the tome, Mrs. Sweeney’s head tilted at an angle as she snored louder than a four hundred–pound man.
    I slid the book into my bag and eased from the chair. Walking on tiptoes, I crossed the room and peeled open the door.
    “Get a better book.”
    I froze with my hand on the knob.
    Mrs. Sweeney opened one puffy, heavy-lidded eye. “I said, get a better book. That one is absolute rubbish. Featherbrained girl running after some silly boy? I won’t have it.”
    I turned my head until I could cover my smile. “Yes, Mrs. Sweeney.” I couldn’t have agreed more. “Is there another classic you’d like to hear instead?”
    “I should say so,” she said as I pulled open the door. “Bring me something by that fella Stephen King.”

Chapter Nine
     
STEELE MARKOV
     
I’m trapped. In this vampire body. In a world that doesn’t understand me. I don’t want immortality . . . I want my freedom.
     
Fangs in the Night, scene 5, page 24 Fierce Brothers Studios
     
    W hen I get to heaven one day, I’m going to ask God how it’s possible that time moves so much quicker on the weekends than on school days. Saturday and Sunday flew by as I helped the family with the scrapbooking guests, did my homework, Skyped with my parents, talked with my brother Alex and his wife, Lucy, then treated myself to some more of Will’s journal.
    Sitting in the music room Monday before school, I pulled the journal out and let my eyes memorize every detail of the picture on the eighth page. The photo was kind of blurry, but he’d captured a town. Houses painted in Crayola colors and drenched in early morning sunshine, surrounded by more of that grass that was so green, fairies must’ve repainted it every night when the people slept. Beneath the photo, Will’s boyish cursive proclaimed a verse from Psalms.
    Lord, You light my lamp; my God illuminates my darkness.
    I knew dark. Dark was the dreary sky outside the windows of this room. It was the shade of the cloud that followed me every minute of the day. It was that voice that whispered I was never going to get this song right. Never going to close up the canyon in my soul where a brother used to be.
    I rested the book in my lap and looked around. Since I had the place to myself, I let my ears open to the sound of the space. The hum of the lights above. The muffler of the car outside. The bird chirping in the drizzly distance.
    God, where are you?
    No answer.
    I squeezed my eyes shut and tried harder.
    Helllew, God .
    It’s me .
    What did