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)
“You can’t jump from up there. You’ll break your leg.”
“Then I’ll break my leg. What do you care?”
That was a really good question. I didn’t even know his name. God knew I had more than enough other stuff to care about without adding him to my list. If he wanted to launch himself from a tree, who was I to stop him?
Turns out, it wasn’t his leg I should have been worried about.
No sooner than I took a step away, he shoved off the branch. He hit the ground with two feet and then sprang forward like he’d landed on a trampoline. Horror showed on his face as he crashed into me. Our bodies tangled, and pain exploded in my leg as it buckled under our combined weight, sending us both down to the grass.
“Oh, shit!” he exclaimed, pushing off me faster than I’d ever seen a person move. “Are you okay?”
I wasn’t. Not in any way, shape, or form.
My mother was dead.
My father was destroyed.
And my leg was broken.
Of course it was. Because when I’d assumed that day couldn’t possibly get any worse, God had clearly seen that as a personal challenge rather than a plea for help.
A silent scream exploded in my head and agony unlike anything I’d ever felt before radiated through my body. My ankle was on fire. That was the only explanation. Wails tore from my throat as I rolled to the side, holding my knee for fear of tracing the pain any lower.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I’m, oh God!” he yelled, scrambling away from me. He punctuated it with a gag and then that boy—that damn boy who had once been stuck in a tree, spying on me as I mourned—dry-heaved, spitting out his gum, his eyes glued to my ankle. “Your…your…foot. It’s… Oh God. Please tell me you have a fake leg.”
“Don’t just stand there, you idiot!”
He drew in a deep breath and fought back another gag. “Where do you live? I’ll run and get your mom.”
My mom.
My mom.
The stabbing in my chest was almost strong enough to eclipse the pain in my ankle.
“She died,” I croaked.
“What?”
“She’s dead!” I screamed, the words shredding me as they came back in an echo. “You can’t get my mom. Nobody can get my mom!”
His voice shook as he asked, “What about your dad?”
I screwed my eyes shut.
I’d had the perfect parents. High school sweethearts. Married by eighteen. Had me at twenty-five. They didn’t argue or bicker. They were the type of weirdos who left love notes hidden around the house and danced in the kitchen when they thought I was in bed. They loved each other so completely that it blinded to them to the world outside of their relationship. As far as I knew, they’d never spent a night apart.
That night they would though. That night and all the nights to come, they would never be together again.
My mother had been the heart and soul of our family. Without her, my father wasn’t going to be able to survive. He’d breathe. He’d wake up every morning. He might even smile once in a while. But without her, his life was over. And then where did that leave me?
Alone. So utterly alone.
But judging by the boy’s face and the fact that my leg was in so much pain that my vision was starting to tunnel, even my poor broken father could help me more than this kid.
“His name is…Joe and we live at three-one-nine Leaning Oak Drive,” I panted. “Go past the big ditch to the…”
“I know where it is. I’ll be right back. Don’t move, okay?”
I listened to his feet crunching in the grass as he sprinted away, and then I lay there staring up at the sky, wishing it would swallow me up.
Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. Everything hurt.
But through it all, I never cried.
What was the point?
Four days, three pins in my ankle, one surgery, and a neon-yellow cast later, I went to my mother’s funeral in a wheelchair. I cringed while listening to my father’s constant whimpers and sniffles. He didn’t look at me or ask if I was okay. He didn’t seem to care that I was ten and had lost my one and only mother. He’d lost his wife—his one and only love.
Anger and resentment brewed inside me, swirling into a wicked rage. I sat in my wheelchair, listening to the preacher talk about how my mother was now looking down on us from the arms of Christ, and I couldn’t stop wishing that it had been my father instead.
I wished he’d gotten cancer.
I wished he’d spent three months wasting away.
I wished we were at his stupid funeral instead of hers.
I looked at him, tears streaming down his cheeks, his gaze anchored to her coffin like he could somehow see through it. Only then did I realize he probably wished I were the one dead instead too.