Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow - By L.L. Muir Page 0,76
sweeting.”
She pulled at his hair, smoothed it off his brow, messed it up again. He could have sat like that all night, but that would only leave him alone in the morning.
“I’m serious, Skye. What do we do? Either I go with you, or we find a way to make you...breakable.”
She laughed.
“Why is it you can laugh, but not cry?”
“Camouflage. A person who can’t laugh draws more attention. Mortals are taught not to cry in public; it’s not necessary, not in my repertoire.” She struggled, tried to get up, but he held her tight. “You see? I’m like a robot. And you want to spend the rest of your life with me.” She rolled her eyes.
He grabbed her chin with one hand and made her look at him.
“There you are. See? There, inside the robot. Take away the robot and I’d still want you with me. Forever.”
“Take away the robot? You don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t just a set of clothes. It’s what ties me to the ground. This container is my gravity. No container and I go up. Up.”
His grip tightened on his precious helium balloon. The idea that she could be taken from him so easily, like a string slipping through his fingers, made him freaking insane.
“Listen. Skye. Listen.”
She responded to his desperation and touched his face, trying to smooth the fear that would not smooth away. “What is it? What did I say?”
“Skye. Please. You don’t understand. You can’t leave me. You can’t. I lied. I won’t be able to go on without you. I won’t. It’s not a choice. I have no choice.”
He pulled her face until their foreheads met. He wanted to jump into those eyes, go where she was. He needed to be closer to make her understand.
“I know it, deep down. I know I’m not capable of living through it.”
She sat up then. “Jamie, you don’t know what you’re saying. You must live through it. You are the one who doesn’t understand.”
She hugged his hand to her heart and closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. She was about to stab him in the heart. He knew it. He tried to brace himself, numb himself for bad news. How else would he survive it?
“Jamie, please, listen to me very carefully. I do have choices. Two choices, but only two. Staying is not one of them.” He tried to pull his hand back, but she held on. “I can put it off a couple more days at most, but by Friday, it’s over. I know what you’re thinking, but where I go you can’t follow.”
“What if I were dead?” The words just jumped out. He hadn’t thought them. Or had he?
“Jamison! Dead or alive, you cannot come.”
He pushed her aside and ran to the bathroom where he puked his brains out. If his mother heard, he didn’t know it. In fact, she could have been standing outside the bathroom, chatting with Skye and he wouldn’t have heard a thing. The bowl was his world. The simplicity of it made him smile as the next wave came up.
A little while later, puffy-faced and feeling green, he laid his head on a pillow made of Granddad’s plaid and shut his swollen, burning eyes. He heard Skye moving around the room. She covered him with a soft and heavy quilt, messed with the wood-burning stove and sat in the old man’s rocking chair. The rhythmic squeaks lulled him toward sleep but he wouldn’t say goodnight.
He was exhausted, too tired think, let alone ask if she would be there in the morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jamison woke to the sounds of someone stirring in the kitchen. For a split second, he wondered which grandparent was putting on the coffee. So many times when he’d awakened on that couch with the busy fabric and firm cushions, he’d been roused by the odd plop and hiss of the old percolator. He’d find Granddad reading the paper and Grandma digging eggs and things out of the fridge.
And brown eggs. He remembered brown eggs.
No one was cooking that morning, however. There was a lot of sack rustling and bottle shuffling, but nothing sizzled or hissed. Nothing smelled but the cold ashes in the stove.
His belly felt full of them.
His mom’s head had appeared around the corner, but then disappeared again. “Oh, good, I didn’t have to wake you.”
“Oh, you woke me all right.” He felt around his face expecting the whole thing to be swollen.