Read Winter Longing for Free Online

one should I wear to the academic competition in Anchorage?” Spencer asked as he held up two shirts, one striped in various shades of blue and one sporting a hideous orange-and-purple check pattern.
    “Hello, you’re twelve. Can’t you dress yourself?” I asked.
    “Without your expert opinion. That would just be silly,” he said dramatically.
    “The blue one,” I said, though I thought Spencer would look good in anything.

CHAPTER 5
     
    On Friday, three days after the crash, Mom came to my room early. Dressed for work, she sat on the edge of my rumpled bed and took my hand. “I don’t feel right leaving you here. Maybe you could come with me. It might help to be with your friends.”
    “Was that what Lindsay said?” I knew it was irrational, but the hurt and anger I felt seeped out anyway.
    “Winter.” Her tone scolded but not strongly. “Everyone handles grief in different ways.”
    I retrieved my hand and rolled over, turning my back to her. Part of me knew she was right, but I felt like my emotions were coming apart at the seams, flying in random directions. The anger seemed to keep some of the pain at bay. At least sometimes I convinced myself of that for a few minutes.
    Mom sighed. “Call me if you need anything, then. Or even if you just want me to come home.”
    “I just want to be alone.” This was a lie. I wanted Spencer there with me—kissing me, holding me.
    I listened as Mom left the room. When I heard her voice outside, I dragged myself to the window. She stood in the driveway talking to Jesse Kerr, but I couldn’t make out their words. I saw him shake his head, and she got into her car and backed out of the gravel drive onto the street.
    Jesse didn’t follow her. Instead, he looked up at my window. I gasped when his eyes met mine. The startling thought that he might try to come up and see me—offer me some empty comfort—made me step back from the window, out of view.
    I sank onto my ottoman and dropped my head into my upturned hands. If a simple glance could unnerve me so much, no wonder my mom seemed concerned. I wondered if I looked as brittle as I felt.
    The walls of my bedroom began to close in on me. I wanted to take the fake Oscar, which Spencer and Lindsay had gotten me two birthdays ago, and use it to bust every breakable object in my room. My movie posters no longer held wonder and dreams, and if I’d had more strength, I would have ripped them down and torn them to shreds. Dreams were now a thing of the past for me. And for Spencer.
    I knew I couldn’t concentrate long enough to lose myself in reading or homework. My DVD collection could melt, for all I cared. When I looked at my sketch pad, I had to fight the urge to set fire to it. Part of me wished the walls would literally close in and squash me like a trash compactor. But that part of myself that forced me to eat—and had driven me to sink myself into the bathwater—wanted to escape this madness caused by my isolation.
    So I emerged from my room like a prisoner thrust upon a world I no longer remembered how to live in. Like Morgan Freeman’s character in The Shawshank Redemption .
    Dad was already gone, off tending to the infected and broken citizens of Tundra. I meandered into the kitchen and pulled a sleeve of Ritz crackers from the cupboard. I trudged from the kitchen to the living room, surveying the room like I hadn’t seen it in years. Suddenly feeling as if I couldn’t breathe indoor air another moment, I wandered onto the deck out back that faced the thinly wooded area at the back of our property.
    I closed my eyes. Sounds and scents became sharper. The breeze carried the scent of firs and the faintest hint of the coming winter. Beyond the stirring of the air through the trees and the belch of Lane Berkley’s old pickup down the street, I heard boat motors on the river and the barely discernible lap of waves against the riverbanks.
    Despite my fatigue, I headed for the river. It took me three times as long