Read The Girl in the Well Is Me for Free Online Page B

throw a punch. That’s the thing with Robby: He’s big and strong but I’m fast. If I can land a blow before he knows it’s coming, it’s basically the same as winning.
    But the dumb thing is that Mom was right. Again. I should’ve looked to see who was wearing the worst-­fitting clothes, which kid had the ugliest hair or the worst crooked teeth, or maybe the one with the awkward walk. I bet those kids would have been kind. I bet they never would have said, “Sing a song on this rotting board that’s covering an old well!” I bet they never would have laughed when I fell.
    I wonder if Heaven is real. I hope so. If it’s not, this whole life is going to have felt like a major rip off. “God?” I say, “sorry for everything I ever thought or did that was bad, like that thing with the salt.”
    I slide a few more inches, my peeled-­back skin rubbing even more on the gritty wall. I’m being peeled. I’m
meat
. Or a potato.
    â€œShit,” I swear. I’m not allowed to swear, so I never have, but now is as good a time as any to start. The
shit
feels strong and like I really mean it. “This is shit,” I say, my voice shaking like a baby’s. Crying again, still crying.
    Then finally, my foot sticks on something that’s poking through the well wall, a rock maybe or a really deep tree root. It makes me feel SO MUCH better, having that place to stand. I’m saved. I’m saved! I murmur thanks to God, just in case it was Him who did it. If not, it doesn’t hurt to say it, right?
    â€œGlory, glory, hallelujah!” I sing and my voice echoes in a muffled hum. It’s pretty much the only hymn-­like thing I know, outside of Christmas songs. We aren’t religious. Dad says God is dead. I don’t know if he’s right. He read it on a T-­shirt one day when we were on the train going into the city and acted like it was a message from God himself. But God wouldn’t send messages if he was dead, so I just rolled my eyes and ignored him and looked out the window at New Jersey whooshing by. The thing is, if God is dead, who is looking after us? Not
Dad
, that’s for sure. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that God is better at message-­sending than Dad is, and God doesn’t even have an e-­mail address.
    â€œI’m OK,” I say out loud. It comes out thick. My throat is also shrinking, along with the rest of me. My throat is a well and the words are me. Stuck. “I’m stuck,” I say, then I stop, because it hurts. I try to bend myself so that I’m more comfortable, but wells just aren’t built for comfort, not like new cars or couches or water beds.
    I had a water bed at our old house. I loved how it sloshed underneath me when I rolled over. I miss that bed, except for when it used to leak and I’d wake up screaming from bad dreams where fish were brushing by my legs with their spiky fins and hungry mouths. Robby thought that bed was hilarious. “Hey, Kammie,” he’d say. “1980 called! It wants its bed back.”
    â€œSo funny,” I’d say. “So funny that I forgot to laugh.”
    Then he’d come and lie next to me on that bed. He’d slam his body up and down to make waves and I’d giggle until I thought I’d pee my pants. It was more fun than it sounds.
    The bed was Mom’s bed in college. When I closed my eyes on that bed, I’d imagine what it was like to be her, living alone, moving to a new state all by herself, starting her real life. I’d wonder how much she cried on that bed, missing Grandma. Grandma may have been an old liar, but she was pretty nice to be around. I bet she was a good mom. She sure made good cookies.
    I was more than a little sad to leave that bed behind. “It’s just a bed,” Mom said, but she was wrong. It was more than that.
    Besides, even if we
could
afford it, they