Linger Read Free Page A

I knew more than this 1986 encyclopedia of diseases did, too, because I had read all the online journals about the newest treatments and unusual cases.
    The seat next to me creaked as someone sat down; I didn’t bother to close the book as she rolled over in her chair. Grace always wore the same perfume. Or, knowing Grace, used the same shampoo.
    â€œIsabel,” Grace said, in a relatively low voice — other students were chattering now as the project was under way. “That’s positively morbid — even for you.”
    â€œBite me,” I replied.
    â€œYou need therapy.” But she said it lightly.
    â€œI’m getting it.” I looked up at her. “I’m just trying to find out how meningitis worked. I don’t think it’s morbid. Don’t you want to know how Sam’s little problem worked?”
    Grace shrugged and turned back and forth in the swivel-back chair, her dark blond hair falling across her flushed cheeksas she dropped her gaze to the floor. She looked uncomfortable. “It’s over now.”
    â€œSure,” I said.
    â€œIf you’re going to be cranky, I’m not going to sit next to you,” Grace warned. “I don’t feel good, anyway. I’d rather be home.”
    â€œI just said ‘sure,’” I said. “That’s not cranky, Grace. Believe me, if you want me to bring out the inner —”
    â€œLadies?” Mr. Grant appeared at my shoulder and looked at my blank screen and Grace’s black one. “Last time I checked, this was a Computer Arts class, not a social hour.”
    Grace looked up earnestly at him. “Do you think I could go to the nurse? My head — I think I have a sinus thing coming on or something.”
    Mr. Grant looked down at her pink cheeks and pensive expression, and nodded his permission. “I want a note back from the office,” he told her, after Grace thanked him and stood up. She didn’t say anything to me as she left, just knocked on the back of my chair with her knuckles.
    â€œAnd you —” Mr. Grant said. Then he dropped his gaze down to the encyclopedia and its still-open page, and he never finished his sentence. He just nodded, as if to himself, and walked away.
    I turned back to my extracurricular study of death and disease. Because no matter what Grace thought, I knew that in Mercy Falls, it’s never over.

• GRACE •
    By the time Sam got home from the bookstore that evening, I was making New Year’s resolutions at the kitchen table.
    I’d been making New Year’s resolutions ever since I was nine. Every year on Christmas, I’d sit down at the kitchen table under the dim yellow light, hunched over in a turtleneck sweater because of the draft from the glass door to the deck, and I’d write my goals for the year in a plain black journal I’d bought for myself. And every year on Christmas Eve, I’d sit down in the exact same place and open the exact same book to a new page and write down what I’d accomplished in the previous twelve months. Every year, the two lists looked identical.
    Last Christmas, though, I hadn’t made any resolutions. I’d spent the month trying not to look through the glass door at the woods, trying not to think about the wolves and Sam. Sitting at the kitchen table and planning for the future had seemed like a cruel pretense more than anything else.
    But now that I had Sam and a new year, that black journal, shelved neatly next to my career books and memoirs, hauntedme. I had dreams about sitting at the kitchen table in a turtleneck sweater, dreams where I kept on writing and writing my resolutions without ever filling the page.
    Today, waiting for Sam to get home, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I got the journal from my shelf and headed for the kitchen. Before I sat down, I took two more ibuprofen; the two the school nurse had given me had pretty much killed the headache