Read Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) for Free Online Page A

breathe without the guy and he secretly feels the same way and would do anything to be with her.
    That was what I wanted, what I craved.
    Sadly, that would never happen for me.
    This was who I really was, and there was no fairytale written for me.
    My headphones were yanked from my ears with such force they unplugged from the phone, and the phone flew out of my reach. I could hear the eerily accurate lyrics of “Nothing But the Water” in the background as I looked up to see my mother standing there fuming.
    I was so wrapped up in my daydream that I hadn’t heard her come into my room. I could already tell this was not going to end well.
    “I’ve been calling your lazy ass for over ten minutes,” she seethed.
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.” I jumped up from the bed. Apologizing. I was always apologizing.
    “Obviously. You and these damn books—are they teaching you how to find a man?” she mocked.
    I didn’t reply.
    She laughed humorlessly. “Of course not. You couldn’t get one even if you offered to blow them. Look at you.” She eyed me distastefully, and I cringed. I knew what she saw, what I was or wasn’t. I wasn’t loveable material; she made sure of it. This was the part I hated the most. She told me this almost every day. I knew it wasn’t true, but deep down…
    “It’s these fucking books. That’s why you can’t do shit right. I’ve been hungry, and you haven’t gotten up to cook or see if I’m hungry. You’re so selfish.” She started looking around my room, picking up random books, and leafing through them.
    If you experience something so much, you kind of have this sixth sense about what is going to happen, and in that moment, I swear I knew, knew something was going to happen. And I was helpless to do anything about it.
    Helpless and fearful.
    “Maybe if you had less distractions then you would be able to do your job.” And with that, she began gathering up every book she could and threw them into the hall. I frantically tried to grab them from her, but she pushed me so hard I fell backward onto the bed, and the look she gave me promised me more if I got up. I watched her gather up all the books she could see—my escapes—and toss them like they were nothing out of my room.
    She then gathered them all up and went into the bathroom, laughing hysterically. Sick bitch.
    I knew before I smelled the smoke what she was going to do. I guess it was that sixth-sense thing, but I knew she would ensure that I would never have those books again unless I rebought them. She burned them. All my favorite words and people that I had come to love were burning.
    I hated her even more in that minute.
    She loved every minute of it.
    The smell of the flames was too much to bear. It felt like all my best friends, my lovers, my teachers were leaving me. I slammed and locked my bedroom door and grabbed the rest of my books and hid them under a floorboard beneath my bed, then I grabbed my phone, earbuds, and bag and climbed out my bedroom window and left her laughing, left my pain.
    I wasn’t worried. She wouldn’t come after me. She’d gotten what she wanted tonight—a little more of me breaking. Each time she punished me for some small infraction, it was breaking me, and it was her drug. She lived to break me, and she was winning. Every time she did something to me, something that no one who loved someone, truly loved them, would do, I skipped taking a pill. I was hoarding them, keeping them separate from the others because those…those pills could help me escape one day.
    From her, from this world.
    From everything.
    I’d be free.
    Earbuds in, I started walking in the direction of Bookwormz—because really I had nowhere else to go—and started formulating a plan. I knew I was weak to even have a plan in place. I knew that death was not the answer. I’d read enough books to know that, I had. But the thing was, not one of those instances in the books were my instances. Not one of those books