Free The Bodies We Wear by Jeyn Roberts Page B

for hot chocolate and donuts. I loved Christian’s dad like my own father. I was always welcome at their dinner table, especially since my mother was often working two or more jobs to try to put food on ours.
    We’d taken a shortcut through the alley that night and found more than we bargained for. Four men looking to get revenge against a man who died before paying off his debts. Funny how quickly life could change with a simple wrong turn down a darkened street.
    “Will they bury him?” I asked when the ambulance turned the corner. They no longer had the flashing lights on.
    “Maybe,” Gazer said.
    “Can I go to the funeral?”
    “You’ll have to ask your mother.”
    I nodded. My chest was itchy and burning at the same time. I kept touching the spot over my heart, tracing my fingers over the veins, thinking how odd it was that the skin didn’t feel different. There was a hollow feeling in my stomach and I was thirsty. I wanted something. It was as if my brain were screaming at me. I remembered the strawberry liquid, remembered how good it tasted on my tongue. I wished I had some more. If I had more, maybe the excruciating hunger in my mind would go away.
    I thought it was funny that I didn’t feel any emotions. I should be sad. I loved Christian. Why wasn’t I crying? I had bawled my eyes out a few months ago when the neighbor’s dog had been killed by a car. Christian had hugged me and told me everything was going to be fine.
    Now Christian was dead. Why didn’t I feel?
    I didn’t know it at the time but Heam numbs the body and brain, especially after a recent ingestion. I couldn’t cry. The drug wouldn’t let me. The tears would come later and they did come. An army of them over the next several years. Sometimes I thought my brain would melt out of my skull from all the grief.
    “Come on,” Gazer said. “Let’s get you home.”
    Home.
    Yeah, that didn’t work out well.
    My mother took one look at the veins on my chest and no longer wanted me.
    That’s how I ended up with Gazer. There was nowhere else to go.

Six
    “So what’s with the anti-socialness? Are you always this stuck up or are you simply challenged in the life department?”
    I look up from my book, not overly surprised to see Jesse standing at my table. Paige is behind him, leaning around his shoulder. It’s obvious she’s set him up to try to change my mind.
    “Maybe I just don’t like you,” I say.
    It was easier when they left me alone. I didn’t have to constantly be on my guard. I didn’t have to be mean.
    This whole bitch process is wearing me down. No matter how much I try to convince myself I’d rather be alone, there’s a small voice in my brain that calls me a liar. Maybe it would be nice to hang out just once and try to be normal. But then the itchiness in my chest reminds me that I’m here on this earth for a short time. I have a purpose. Just one. And I will go to my grave once I fulfill it.
    Having friends would just complicate things. It might end the loneliness but it would only prolong the sorrow. Which is worse?
    “Yeah, I don’t believe that,” Jesse says, and he pulls out the chair across from me and sits down. Paige continues to stand but she smiles at me. There’s something odd in that grin. They’ve come here for a purpose other than friendship. But what?
    I glance around the room but once again the teachers are all off in other directions. I can’t help wondering if I’ve been so good at following their rules that they no longer feel they have to watch me. Or maybe they never cared to watch me in the first place. Have I been paranoid all this time over nothing?
    “Paige has been telling me a pretty incredible story,” Jesse says. He takes one of the fries off my plate and eats it. “She told me that you had a run-in with Trevor. Left him in nasty bloody shape too. I saw him at the club last night. He looked like he’d been run over by a truck.”
    I shrug.
    “So it is true?” Jesse looks