Read Touched for Free Online Page B

Yeah.
    Anyway, I was a good runner. If I’d been normal, I bet I could have been a great one. I ran steadily, navigating around the few late-day beachgoers with umbrellas and chairs. The other runners lagged behind me; even with the headache from hell, I was on track for a record. I wasn’t even out of breath. A couple of hot girls in bikinis grinned at me. I’m not bad-looking; I’m tall, with thick black hair and an okay build, maybe not as good as Sphincter’s, but I always got looks from girls. After a minute or so, though, my charm wore off. I’d develop a tic or nervously go off in one direction or another, blowing it. This accounted for me being seventeen and never having gotten to second base with a girl. Even my first base was on account of an error; I’d been running on the boardwalk late one night, which I sometimes did to calm my mind, and when I stopped at the fountain to get a drink, a drunk girl must have thought I was her boyfriend because she grabbed me and kissed me.
Kissing soft lips, blond curls in my eyes
    The image lit a fire under me. My pace quickened even more. It was the second time this afternoon that I’d had that memory. How could that be real? The picture was so strong I got lost in it. I forgot everything, even the simple rhythm of my legs pumping and my feet pounding on the boards. But when I passed the entrance for the Seventh Avenue beach, everything changed. I lost the rhythm. My lungs constricted and burned. The last image I saw was that of the little girl, lying dead on the sand.
You killed our Emma
    Suddenly, I fell forward, onto my knees, so unexpectedly that I didn’t have time to put my hands out to stop the fall. I smashed my face against the boardwalk. Then I rolled off, onto the sand, gasping and choking.
    Coach Garner was a guy who perpetually smelled like Bengay and probably clicked on his stopwatch buttons in his sleep. He’d never run, even if something with large teeth was chasing him. When he stood over me, his beer gut blocked out the sun. “Wow. Just wow.”
    I hoped he was talking about how masterfully I’d run that first nine-tenths of a mile.
    “That was the most pathetic fall I’ve ever seen.”
    Eh. I rolled over and propped myself up on one elbow. Across the way, a bunch a girls giggled at me, but I wasn’t sure if they were part of the regular group of people who giggled at me, or new ones, because my vision was blurred. I looked down and saw blood soaking into my white tech shirt. My knees were dotted with blood and sand and little black splinters.
    “So, um, does that mean I didn’t make the team?”
    Coach Garner laughed long and loud, like Santa Claus with a sadistic streak, then turned and ambled away without bothering to help me up. I scrambled to my feet, still feeling woozy. Then I tilted my head back and shuffled over to a bench, squeezing my nose, which by this time was seriously gushing. I think bits of major organs were leaking out. Every runner in school was staring at me, and most were laughing their asses off.
    “Good one, Crazy Cross,” Sphincter called across the fence to me, flashing me a thumbs-up. He was standing with The Sergeant, who was giving him the ol’ New School Record shoulder rub and watching me like I was a glob of gum in danger of getting on his son’s running shoe.
    Rotting from the inside , I repeated to myself, over and over so that it drowned out the next You Will. Screw them.
    Before I could sit down, someone came up beside me. At that moment, I knew who it was. My stomach lurched even before I heard her say, “That looks bad.”
    I looked up for only a second. She was wearing the same exact expression she’d worn earlier today—a horrified kind of confusion. Was I doomed to always see her every time my head was exploding, or about to? Yeah, that totally explained why she would be kissing me. Maybe that wasn’t part of my future. I’d probably wanted it so bad that I’d just been