Read Jump When Ready for Free Online

that—we’re just sort of recovering from
whatever did or didn’t happen in our last life. Waiting and preparing, all
that. Nikki came up with the name, now that I think about it.”
    “You may not have substance issues,” Nikki said over her
shoulder as she walked toward the house, “but you definitely have issues. Trust
me.”
    As soon as we were inside Halfway House, it only took a
second to realize I’d never seen anything like it before. Not even close. For
example, living room? No way. Who uses a living room? Try inside pool, with
lounge chairs all around and “sunlight” shining down from above. This didn’t
seem possible, but there it was all the same. Next to the pool was a snack bar
window with a neon sign that said “Always Open.” I got only that far, then
stopped and stood there taking it in.
    “Come on,” Jamie said. “There’s more.”
    They walked toward the next room and I followed.
    “This is the game room,” Jamie said. “Check it out.
Pretty sure we have it covered.”
    Jamie wasn’t kidding—the place was fully loaded. Pool
tables, ping-pong, air hockey. Two bowling lanes, full-sized. Pinball machines,
Wii, PlayStation and Xbox. Not to mention a wall lined with arcade style video
games. For a moment, I wondered how I’d get the money to play those but
something told me it wouldn’t be a problem.
    I shook my head and looked around again. “This is
amazing! Not possible, but amazing.”
    “Oh, it’s possible,” Nikki said. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t
be here.” She seemed to be enjoying my confusion.
     “You need to see the dining room,” Naomi said. “There
wasn’t anything like it during my last life.”
    I followed them into the next room to see a totally
deluxe mall food court, including everything imaginable and some things I’d
never imagined. Chinese, Mexican, burgers and pizza—all those, definitely. But
have you ever heard of Vegan Queen? Chocolate Hut? Neither had I, but there
they were.
    “As you probably guessed,” Jamie said, “physical space is
basically meaningless here. This is a pretty big house, but obviously it’s way
bigger on the inside. Except when we don’t want it to be. It’s totally up to
us. Come on, let’s go upstairs.”
    I wasn’t sure what to expect, but at the top of the
stairs there was just a carpeted hallway. Nothing unusual, pretty much what you
would have expected from outside.
    “These are our rooms up here,” Jamie said.
    “We all have views from the front windows, and back,”
Naomi said. “It’s really neat.”
    Since all the bedroom doors lined the same wall, that
didn’t seem possible. But I knew it would be true.
    “This is Nikki’s room, here,” Jamie said, as we passed
the first door. “Next to the stairs.”
    “In case Jamie gets on my nerves and I have to flee,”
Nikki said.
    Jamie cracked a smile. “This one is Naomi’s, then there’s
Simon’s. The next one is mine.” We took a few more steps before he pointed to a
door that stood partly open. From inside the room, I heard music playing. I
recognized the band, My Chemical Romance—one of my favorites. “That one is
yours,” Jamie said. “We think you’ll like it. Feel like maybe having some time
alone?”
     “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” I said. “Kind of
confused right now.”
    “Totally understandable.”
    The fact was, I also wanted to hang out a little longer.
I’d never met people like them before. Each of them were so different from each
other, but they didn’t seem worried about it. Not like anything I’d experienced
in middle school, definitely, where everyone had seemed so insanely desperate
to fit in. From what I’d heard, high school wasn’t all that different. Maybe
once you got to college, if you survived long enough to get there, you’d
finally be able to breathe. But these guys around me now didn’t seem to really
care and that’s what I liked about them. They seemed like cool people. Okay,
Curtis I