Blink Once

Blink Once Read Free Page A

Book: Blink Once Read Free
Author: Cylin Busby
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You obviously are not up for a game of checkers, are you?” She grinned. “I mean, we could try it—I could move your pieces based on yes-or-no blinks, but … I think maybe not.” Her sense of humor was growing on me. Maybe she wasn’t so bad. “I’ll read to you. You like it when your mom does that.” I didn’t remember my mom reading to me. How could Olivia know about it when I didn’t? Had I been unconscious that long?
    She opened the bedside table and took a book out of the drawer.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
. It looked like my copy of the book. But I hadn’t read that in years—it was so like my mom to bring in that book. She was always pulling out stuff from when I was little and trying to makeit relevant now, like she didn’t want to let go of me at age ten or twelve or something. When Olivia opened the book and started reading, I was surprised by how quickly I slipped into the story and forgot about what was going on. I liked her voice and her pale white face, her lips so red as she formed the words.
    When I discovered Harry Potter, I ripped through the books at lightning speed. I was ten and I guess I was what you would call a nerd. Actually, I had no idea how nerdy I was until I met Mike. Mike was the person who saved me from a high school career of being a complete outsider. I had to give him total credit: he sought me out, made friends with me. Of course, he did it for totally selfish reasons—he wanted someone to bike with. But I was saved from nerdom, and got a best friend in the bargain, so I’m not about to complain.
    I’m not sure if Mike and I ever talked about Harry Potter. If he knew that, at one time, I was obsessed with those books. It’s not the kind of thing he and I would ever talk about—books, reading. It only took Olivia about twenty-four hours to figure it out, and I’ve never actually spoken a word to the girl. As I watched her mouth move, I couldn’t help noticing her face was really pretty, and I was hardly hearing the words. Before I knew it, I was asleep again.
    When I woke, it was dark and I was facing the floor. I’d been rotated again. I didn’t know how much time hadpassed, or even whether it was the same day. But something woke me up. Someone was crying—Olivia, in her room?—but it was closer than that, and I could see, looking to the side, that the door to my room was now shut. Who was crying? It felt like a dream, like a dream I had had before.
    That’s when I saw feet, beside my bed, by the small table. They were not in nurse’s shoes, but in sandals. Painted toenails. Little girl’s feet. She was sniffling and doing something in the drawer by my bed, pulling things out of it. Who was this person? She pushed the drawer shut and walked away, still sobbing, sniffling, but her sounds growing more distant as she left the room. I didn’t hear the door close behind her.
    I tried to clear my throat, but I knew the sound wouldn’t be loud enough for Olivia or the nurses to hear. The next thing I knew, it was bright in the room, and the nurse was rotating my bed. I must have fallen asleep again.
    “I heard from your mom today,” the nurse told me, dropping some liquid into my eyes. “She’s not going to be able to make it after work tonight and she wanted me to let you know. I told her that you wouldn’t be any trouble at all, so don’t make me out to be wrong, okay?” She smiled, and I noticed that she had a big space between her front teeth. Something about that made me instantly like her even more than I already did.
    “All right, handsome, you have yourself a good day,”she said, hanging my chart on the foot of the bed and leaving the room.
    I couldn’t really wake up. With all the sleep I was getting, you would think it would be easy to be awake, but I drifted in and out, unable to tell what time it was or what day. Sometimes a nurse went down the hall. Another time, someone in a lab jacket came into my room and looked at my chart.

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