Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
The day she got her cast off was terrifying for me. I’d been expendable to my own mother. How was I supposed to expect a ten-year-old girl I’d only known a few months to stick around? What if we weren’t really friends? What if I was as useless as my father claimed? I spent the entire night pacing and panicking that I was going to lose her. She wouldn’t need me to carry her book bag or give her piggyback rides anymore. I wasn’t positive what she had done for fun before I’d broken her leg, but I couldn’t imagine it was sitting under a tree, listening to a boy ramble about meaningless crap.
She wasn’t on the bus that morning and I swear it was the loneliest I’d ever felt. My smile failed me that day as I alternated between doodling stick-figure wars and staring at the door to our classroom, anxiously waiting for her to come walking through.
Lunch passed and still no Thea.
I had friends in class, people I sat with and played pranks on, but none of them were her. By the time the final bell rang, I was ready to peel out of my skin. It was the first time I was ever in a hurry to get home.
Armed with nothing but her missed work for the day that I promised our teacher I’d deliver and a healthy dose of nervous rolling through my stomach, I jogged up the driveway and knocked on her door.
She was smiling when she opened it. Probably because she was happy to have her cast off, but it filled me in unimaginable ways to think that maybe, just maybe, that smile was because she was as excited to see me too.
“Hey,” she said.
It had been twelve weeks since I’d met her, but I’d never felt more awkward in my life. “Hey.”
She tucked a strand of long, brown hair behind her ear. “How was school?”
“Good.”
She nodded. “Good.”
“How was the doctor?”
She lifted the leg of her jeans, revealing a thin, pale ankle. “Good.”
I nodded that time. “Good.”
There was a long pause, my nightmare where she slammed the door in my face only seconds away from playing out in front of me.
I thrust the stack of papers toward her. “Here’s the work you missed today.”
“Thanks.”
We both nodded that time.
Any other day, with any other person, that entire exchange would have been laughable. But that was the day everything would change for us—again. It’s crazy to think a silly piece of plaster around her leg had dictated so much of our time together. But it had. Our relationship had started with that cast, and I was scared out of my wits that it was going to end it all too.
She was smiling. That had to be a good sign.
But then again, Thea didn’t smile often, so maybe this was part of her gentle letdown before she told me to take a hike.
I was losing it. All I had to do was rip off the Band-Aid and ask her if she wanted to hang out. If she said no, I’d have my answer. She was done with me. Or maybe not. Thea always said no. Okay, so all I had to do was ask her, then beg her, then harass her, and if she still said no, then I’d have my answer.
Oh God, what if she was done with me?
“Uh…why do you look like you’re about to throw up?” she asked.
Because I was, in fact, about to throw up. I kept that to myself. “I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do. Any chance you can aim that in the grass so I don’t have to clean it up later?”
“I’m not going to puke,” I bit out entirely too roughly.
Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “Jeez, somebody’s in a bad mood.”
I huffed and cut my gaze over her shoulder. It was now or never. My entire life hung in the balance. Or at least it felt that way. Rip off the Band-Aid. Just do it. “Listen, are we cool?”
“No.”
My gaze jumped to hers. “What?”
She looked down at the papers I’d handed her. “Who brings homework for their friend when they get to skip school?” She slapped the papers against my chest. “Take that and burn it. We can tell Mrs. Young that you lost it on the way home.”
The relief tore from my lungs. I didn’t just smile with my mouth—it radiated through my whole body.
I shoved the papers back in her direction. “No way. My friend skipped school today, so I had to do all of those worksheets in class without anyone to cheat off of. The least you could have done was give me a heads-up that you weren’t coming so I could sit next to Tiffany.”
“Tiffany!” she exclaimed, pure Thea Hull disgust crinkling her forehead.
Yeah. We were going to be all right.