After I Wake Read Online Free

go to the corner and drag over a beanbag, which he settles into, pulling out his phone and checking it as he so often does. He slides it back into his pocket with a worried expression that he probably doesn’t want me seeing.
    A moment later, the crescendo of paws clattering out of my mom’s room and into mine bring in the dachshund. She is sleeping on my stomach in record time, curled tight into a little ball while I rest my hand on her rump, which is dangerously close to my face. The slamming of my bedroom door must have woken her.
    â€œSarah missed you. She slept on your bed the first two nights. I couldn’t get her to move at all.” My mom is lazily stroking one of her ears. It slips from the top of her head to sprawl on my chest.
    â€œI’m just tired, Mom,” I groan in response. “It’s been a pretty weird four months.” Emmett bursts out laughing. I raise my head off the pillow to glare in his general direction. As he struggles to contain his guffaws, he looks at me. There are actually tears streaming from his eyes. I have no clue what I’ve done or uttered, but something must have been amusing. I flop my head back to the pillow.
    â€œIt’s just,” Emmett begins, trying to swallow the laughter, “that is the understatement of the entire history of the planet Earth itself. Weird? Please, that doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
    He is incredibly right. I have to smile again. I lift my head again to give him an angry look. I don’t understand why he insists upon being so damn happy and all infectious with it. I guess I got lucky with a perfect friend. How cliché.
    I lower my head onto my pillow after my neck begins to feel stiff with the ferocity of my glare. I tell Emmett my thought process about his infectious happiness inducing ability, and he just looks at me. He makes everyone laugh. Go figure. My mom sits up and walks over to Emmett.
    â€œHey there, Emmett. How’s it going?” She keeps her tone light and cheery. “Do you think that you might be willing to go get a nice coffee and then drink it in the privacy of your own home? I’d like to have a heart-to-heart conversation with my daughter. We’re going to talk about all sorts of girly things I’m sure you have no desire to hear about.”
    â€œWell, when you put it that way,” Emmett says, matching my mother’s tone, “I can see where I become the—”
    â€œI have a uterus!” I shout, sick of their playful bickering. “Let’s talk about that!” Emmett leaves very quickly after that, screaming over his shoulder that he has absolutely no desire to learn about the exact functions of such female organs.
    He should get it, though. I’ve only been home a little while, but Emmett’s sense of privacy is not the best. I don’t blame him for not realizing he should leave me alone with my mom. I’m amazed she let him in at all.
    When my mom closes the door behind him and returns to me, I haven’t moved. My excuse is the sleeping canine on my stomach. As she lies down next to me, my mom looks at me.
    Without averting my gaze from the ceiling where it has returned, I choose to inform my mother, “You are incredibly passive-aggressive but at the same time utterly sassy. I very much appreciate your skills in both, and I assume the live studio audiences of your inevitable sitcom will agree.” I am thanked profusely for my observations.
    Then my mother picks up Sarah and moves her, which is only the cruelest thing she can do to someone who was busy absorbing the body heat reflected by a very small animal. I roll over onto my side to protest, which I know is exactly what she wants.
    â€œWant to talk about it?” Her unasked question lingers in the air. I roll back so that I can stare at my ceiling.
    â€œAbout what? The note? The fact that I tried to kill myself? The unending and crippling depression where I felt