The Survival Kit

Read The Survival Kit for Free Online Page B

Book: Read The Survival Kit for Free Online
Authors: Donna Freitas
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Social Issues, Love & Romance, Death & Dying
first. But when the credits began to roll across the screen, I waited for the inevitable, becoming numb, like someone had shot Novocain through my limbs and little by little they were losing feeling. By the time Chris leaned over to kiss me it felt as though a stone statue had replaced the living girl, or that I’d suddenly left my body and become a ghost, hovering above.
    Chris’s lips met my mouth, but my mouth didn’t respond, and when he pushed me back onto the couch, the metal spring stabbed right into the most vulnerable spot of my back, where
my lungs ached for breath. Chris fumbled with the button on my jeans and I gasped, but not in a good way, and his hand froze. He moved off of me and I slipped from the couch onto the floor, curling up tight on the rug by the coffee table and watching as Chris sat there, raking his fingers through his blond hair.
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “Don’t you like me anymore?” Chris asked, his voice vulnerable, showing me a side that he kept hidden from everyone else. “You used to be so into things.”
    “I know,” I said, and hung my head. Kissing, sex, and everything in between used to be so easy with us. Whenever we ran out of things to say it always filled in whatever was missing, smoothed over our disagreements when we fought. But now, when we needed it to help us leap over a difficult place, we ended up staring out over this wide gap with no way to cross. I didn’t know how to be in my body anymore—not after seeing my mother’s wither and die and take her life with it. Those final images of her taught me that bodies were places for hurt and pain, not pleasure. “I’m sorry. I really, truly am,” I told him.
    Chris stood up, his body outlined by the light of the television flickering behind him. “Is there a time frame you can give me or something? How long do you need, Rose?”
    I stared at him, thinking about how my entire world was broken in pieces and I didn’t know how to put them back together again. “I don’t know, I really don’t. I wish I did. I wish I could fix this. I wish I could fix everything.”

    “Is there something I did?” Chris asked. “What is making you like this?”
    “My mother died,” I whispered, and each time I uttered this it felt impossible.
    Chris’s hands, both of them, went up to his head and ran down his face. “I know. But that was like, five months ago.”
    “Almost four,” I corrected him. “And it still feels like yesterday.”
    “What can I do to help? What do you need from me, Rose? Do you want space? Do you want to break up and you’re just too afraid to tell me? Is that it?”
    My head jerked up and my eyes fixed on his. Inside, part of me screamed no , but another part wanted this drama over, for the raw feelings that kept tearing at the seam of a deep, far from healed wound to stop, and to be left alone once and for all. “Do you ?”
    Chris stood there, not moving, not answering—not at first. I could feel his eyes on me while mine shifted away, studying the individual tufts of the rug, like short blades of grass. Then I heard him say, “I don’t know anymore. Maybe we should end this before it gets any worse because it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Okay,” he repeated. “Really? That’s all you have to say? You’re fine with breaking up?”
    I shrugged—I didn’t know what else to do. “But you said—”
    “I didn’t think you would agree,” he yelled.
    I shrank away. “I’m sorry, I—”
    “I thought you’d tell me, No, Chris, I love you, Chris, we can work things out, Chris , I’m so grateful you’re here for me, Chris, and soon I’ll feel better and things will go back to normal !” His tone was mocking and his breath came in angry heaves.
    “But I don’t know if they ever will,” I said in a small voice.
    There was a long pause. “Fine. I guess that’s it.” Chris’s voice was even again, a mixture of hurt and fury. “We’re

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