My Blood Approves Read Free Page A

pick me up
and carry me out to the car. Jane must’ve gotten the same idea,
because she inserted herself between us.
    Almost the instant I sat
in his car, I fell asleep. I remember a brief discussion about who
he would take home first. I woke up just as Jack pulled up in front
of my apartment building. Jane was already gone, so I guess he’d
dropped her off. I’m not sure how he knew where I lived, but it
didn’t seem important then.
    I left Jack outside my brownstone and went
up to my apartment. Fortunately, my mom wouldn’t be home from her
shift until after seven a.m., and my younger brother Milo was
already asleep in his room.
    Painfully, I stripped off the ridiculous get
up that Jane had dressed me in and pulled on an oversized tee
shirt. I grabbed my cell phone with the full intention of plugging
it in, but I collapsed onto my bed with my phone in my hand before
I had the chance.
    Just as I started passing out, I felt the
phone vibrate in my hand, startling me awake.
    Sweet dreams :) – Jack
    The text message was from Jack, and I felt
my heart beat faster. Somehow, when I had been sleeping, Jack had
gotten my phone number from my cell and programmed his number into
mine.
    Under other circumstances, that might have
been a little creepy, but in this case, it just made me feel happy
and relieved. Clicking off my phone, I set it on my bedside table
and promptly fell asleep.

    - 3 -
    When I woke up, the first
thing I noticed, after the painful damage to my feet, were the ten
million text messages from Jane. All of them were about Jack, and I
felt no urge to reply.
    I pulled on sweats, and then stumbled into
the bathroom to overdose on painkillers and cover my feet in
Neosporin and Band-Aids.
    Miraculously, I’d woken up before two
o’clock in the afternoon, and that meant that my mom was still
asleep. She did a graveyard shift as a dispatcher in St. Paul, so
she usually made it home at an ungodly hour and then slept all
day.
    My brother Milo was a studious little
bastard though, and he’d probably been in bed before midnight and
up before nine.
    When I made it out to the living room, I
found him sitting at the computer, probably researching a paper for
school even though we were on Spring Break. He was a sophomore in
high school and had the social life of a toddler.
    It was a sad, sad thing that I was the cool
one in the family.
    “ What’s wrong with you?”
Milo asked, glancing up at me.
    “ What’s wrong with you?” I
countered, utilizing my quick wit.
    I had gone into the small adjoined kitchen
and poured myself a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. (Scientists haven’t
tested this, but I’ve come to find that a Gatorade, a bowl of
Fruity Pebbles, and an Excedrin will cure any hangover.)
    “ Hung over?” Milo noticed
me creating my antidote, and I definitely felt that way.
    “ Something like that,” I
said.
    With my bowl of cereal and
lemon-lime sports drink in hand, I flopped on the couch, determined
to find either Looney Tunes or a trashy Lifetime movie (the second part of
my hang over cure-all).
    “ What time did you get in
last night?” Milo asked with a hint of disapproval in his
voice.
    He’s a year and half years younger than me,
but he’s definitely the parental figure in our relationship. Since
Mom’s always working, and Dad’s been out of the picture since the
beginning of time, I guess one of us had to step up and do it.
    “ I don’t know.” I tried to
think, but I couldn’t actually remember.
    After we left the diner, I had pretty much
been unconscious the entire time. I only vaguely remembered getting
the text from Jack, and I guessed it was somewhere around two or
three.
    “ So what did you end up
doing last night?” Milo had given up on even the pretense of doing
something on the computer and tilted his chair towards
me.
    His dark brown eyes settled on me with their
usual mix of curiosity and concern, as if he always half-expected
me to admit to shooting up black tar heroin and having