Read Soul Fire for Free Online Page B

friend,” I spit out.
    “Stop it, Ashla! Just stop!” Celeste jumped up and whirled on me. “I keep telling myself it’s the head injury and you’ll be your old self soon. But soon isn’t happening and I’m sick of hanging out with some moody, dark, depressed person I don’t know anymore.”
    “So don’t!” I drove my feet into my Nikes. Then, I balled up the newspaper and crammed it into my pack. “Just screw off, like everyone else.”
    Celeste threw her hands on her hips. “I mean, can you blame them? Really?”
    I straightened up slowly and looked at my lifelong friend. I couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t part of my life. Her family lived right next door, and our moms had put us together to play as infants. We did daycare, preschool, kindergarten, and public school together. We lived at each other’s homes without giving it a thought. She was a sister to me. I loved her, I realized, the same way I would have if she had been born into our family. I collapsed onto the bench. “No, I can’t blame them. And I wouldn’t blame you either.”
    Celeste dropped down beside me, putting her arm around me. “Hey,” she said softly, “we’ve been besties forever. Maybe everyone else is avoiding you, but I’ll always be there, you know that, Ashla.”
    Would she? Would she still be there tomorrow, or next week, or whenever the eye of this storm finally hit. The truth was, that I, Ashla Cameron, hadn’t destroyed just anybody’s life, I’d chosen Seattle’s high profile young hockey great who once had fame and fortune in his future. Now, thanks to me, he had to live in a world of pain, with the possibility of never walking normally again, his hopes for a once-bright future gone.
    Would Celeste want to stand by someone who’d done that? How could she even look at me? I could barely look at myself.
    Six weeks of worry, fear, and dread had finally culminated into the monster rearing its ugly head. What would happen to me? To my parents? Would there be charges or a lawsuit? I’d overheard my parents whispering these possibilities. Now these ramifications loomed dark and ominous. Overwhelmed by a dismal future, I dropped my head into my hands.
    Celeste said, “You haven’t been the same since the accident. I know you blame yourself.” She tucked a stray strand of damp hair behind her ear. “It’s a terrible thing to be found responsible for injuring another person.” She paused, “It’s almost impossible to live with that.”
    I mumbled through my fingers, “So, what do I do? Do I go on with my everyday life like nothing happened? Do I go to school each morning like nothing’s changed? Do I hit the pool or the rink, practice, race, and compete like everything is the same as it was before? Do I hang out with my friends and pretend they don’t whisper behind my back? Not freaking likely. There’s no way I can live with this! No way.”
    “Me neither.”
    I looked up at Celeste, surprised. “What do you mean, me neither ? You don’t have to figure out how you’re going to survive something like this. You’re the girl who goes to church three times a week; the girl who never, ever does anything wrong; the girl who volunteers at the mission every Christmas while the rest of us sneak rum and eggnog. You are Miss Pristine. You have no idea what this is like, Celeste. You can’t even imagine what it feels like to be responsible for something as bad as this.”
    There was a deep silence in the empty locker room. Then, Celeste said, “Yes, I do.”
    “No you don’t.”
    “I do,” she paused, “and I can.” She hesitated, her voice cracking, “We’re close like sisters, Ashla, but even sisters don’t know everything about each other.”
    I stared at her for a long time. “What are you saying?”
    Celeste wouldn’t look at me. “Some day I’ll tell you, but not right now.” Her cornflower eyes finally found mine. They were haunted as she whispered, “Trust me. I’ve been where you