For This Life Only Read Online Free Page B

a blank space in my memory, it felt like a complete absence of everything.
    What was that? Where was I when that was happening? Was I just gone?
    That wasn’t supposed to be the way it worked. Eli had given me crap about telling Sarah about the bright light and heaven, but wasn’t that the way it was supposed to go? Or something close? Not just . . . nothing.
    I could feel cold welling up in me, like my heart was suddenly pumping the icy water from the creek we’d crashed into.
    But before I had time to fully process what any of that meant, the doctor’s final words jostled for my attention.
    You’re lucky someone found you when they did. Someone had to find me? But that didn’t make any sense. Eli wasright there and wearing his seat belt, like a good, responsible citizen. He should have been able to call 911 and do CPR.
    Suddenly, his absence from my room seemed enormous and ominous.
    â€œWhere’s Eli?” I asked, trying to ignore the flicker of warning in the back of my brain and the tension coiling in my gut.
    The atmosphere in the room immediately shifted. My mom sucked in a sharp breath and dropped her gaze to the floor, and my father turned away, scrubbing his hands over his face.
    â€œI’ll be back this afternoon,” the doctor said quietly to everyone and no one as he left the room.
    â€œIs Eli okay?” I persisted, but neither of my parents would look at me. Even with my dad’s back to me, though, I could see his shoulders shaking.
    The tilting feeling returned, only this time it was more like the entire planet had dropped, trying to shake me off into space.
    Sarah stared at me, pressing her mouth into the top of Patsie’s head. I’d never seen her this quiet. Ever. Her eyes were wide above the matted fur, like she was holding back a flood of words.
    Or trying not to cry.
    My mom straightened in her chair, wiping under hereyes with her free hand. “They told us it was quick,” she said, giving me a tremulous smile. “He wouldn’t have known what was happening. Just a bump on the head, and then it would be like drifting off to sleep.”
    â€œWhat?” I heard every word, but it was like they bounced off the surface of my brain, refusing to sink in for processing.
    What she was saying was impossible. And yet, I could feel a growing emptiness in my middle, as if someone had rammed one of those telephone poles through my gut, cartoon-style.
    Her fingers tightened on mine to the point of pain. “Honey, Elijah didn’t make it.”

EIGHT WEEKS LATER

CHAPTER FOUR
----
    I WOKE UP BEFORE my alarm would have gone off, if I’d bothered to set it.
    Gray predawn light filled my room, sapping everything of color. Not that there was much to see. Small heaps of discarded clothes, a stack of books and papers from school, the metal crutches I theoretically no longer needed leaning against the wall. The row of baseball trophies across the top of my bookshelf gleamed in the faint light like enigmatic hieroglyphs from a secret society I was no longer a part of.
    I squinted at the clock through the maze of dull orange prescription bottles on my bedside table. 6:45. My mom would be here any minute.
    I’d spent the last two months in a half-conscious haze of exhaustion and pain medication, and the one day Ireally needed to be asleep, to be so thoroughly out that even the most hard-hearted person would feel guilty waking me—that was the day my body decided to take the initiative and flip my eyes open without my permission.
    I braced my weight on my right elbow and heaved myself onto my side, turning away from the door. With the awkward plastic cast on my left leg and the stubborn pain and stiffness in my shattered and twice-repaired elbow, movement was no longer the simple, thoughtless reflex it had once been.
    Closing my eyes, I willed myself to go back to sleep. But a light tapping at my door signaled my mother’s arrival.