Read Chasing Before for Free Online

the head or something?”
    Is he asking about my death? “Not exactly. I died in a car accident. I suppose a head injury could’ve been a part of it.”
    “Maybe, but head trauma and amnesia don’t follow you to the afterlife.” Nate rubs the back of his head. “If they did, my skull would still be caved in, thanks to that coward who did me in with a hammer.”
    “Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that someone murdered you,” Neil says with a very un-Neil-like smirk.
    Megan gasps, looking wounded. Neil backpedals, realizing too late that Megan might have been murdered too. “I’m sorry, Megan. I—I didn’t mean—”
    “You get into a lot of car accidents?” Nate asks me, interrupting Neil’s stuttering apology.
    “No,” I say. “Only the one that killed me. The day before my eighteenth birthday.”
    “What are you talking about?” Nate shakes his head. “You didn’t die in that accident. I met you six weeks later in the hospital.”

four
    NATE’S WORDS do not compute. “You must be confusing me with someone else.” I try to laugh, but it comes out choked.
    “See for yourself.” Nate darts forward and lines up his palm against mine.
    I’m immediately sucked into his memory. He’s walking down a hall that smells strongly of antiseptic and rotting flowers, and it takes me a second to adjust. Because exactly like all those times I rented memories off the net in Level Two, I’m inside this stranger’s head. I’m seeing what he sees, thinking what he thinks, feeling what he feels.
    Nate double-checks Neil’s room number. He’s been spaced out the past day—his jetlag is killer. Hence the “531”scrawled on his skin with a black Sharpie lifted from the nurse’s station.
    An orderly whizzes by, pushing an empty bed with rumpled sheets. Nate scans the room numbers until he’s outside 531. He puffs out his chest and hopes for the best.
    He makes his grand entrance back into Neil’s life after nearly four years away. Neil is sitting up in his bed. He wears a normal T-shirt and a pair of shorts over a long cast on his left leg. The cast extends all the way from his midthigh to his foot, and it hangs on a pulley.
    There’s a girl next to him, holding his hand. Short, spiky brown hair. Long legs. Neil’s so into this girl, it takes him a minute to notice that Nate is even in the room. Finally Neil squints up at Nate, and then his eyes widen, but he doesn’t say anything.
    Best to plunge right in . “Hey, Little Brother,” Nate says. “Stoked you pulled through. Dad called and told me about the crash. Said some bastard stole a police car for a joyride.”
    “I wondered how long it would take for you to show your face around here again.” Neil leans forward with a wince, and the girl tucks another pillow behind his back. “Have you been to see Dad yet?”
    Nate ignores his question. Instead he swaggers over to the girl and extends his hand. “Name’s Nate. Neil’s brother. The pleasure is all yours.”
    She looks up at Nate with her huge brown eyes and shaky smile. She takes Nate’s hand politely. “I’m Felicia.Neil’s girlfriend.” There’s an angry red scar on her temple. And fading bruises that clash with her porcelain skin. She’s banged up. Picture-perfect damsel in distress. And she looks like Gracie, which could explain why Neil’s in love with her.
    “You never told me you had a brother,” Felicia says.
    “Half brother,” Neil clarifies.
    There are no free chairs in the small room. The windowsill is covered with get-well cards. Nate sits on the end of Neil’s bed. Then he pulls the Sharpie out of his pocket and uncaps it.
    “Better sign this before space runs out. How’d you get to be so popular? Dealing drugs?” Nate asks. Doodles and signatures compete for top billing on Neil’s cast. The only splashes of white are in awkward places, like under his thigh and the back of his ankle.
    Neil flinches. “Don’t bother.”
    Nate shrugs and poises the pen above