Loud Awake and Lost Read Online Free Page B

not? What—who—was Claude talking about?
    Survivor. Survivor’s guilt. Because I…Because there was someone…
    Brutal as a nail gun to my brain, I remembered. But I couldn’t rip my gaze away from Claude’s. I must have looked a touch intense, because now he was faltering.
    “Easy, girl,” he mumbled. “You can stop with the evil eye anytime you want. I haven’t said anything you don’t already know.”
    “I…” I might be sick. My vision blurred. I hadn’t known. Or maybe I had known on some level, but somehow it had slipped…somewhere…I…The table was waiting for me to say something. Anything. “I should pay
you
to write the pity angle for my application, Claude,” I said. “What’s your rate? Don’t pretend you don’t have one.”
    “Is it more money than what you pay Lucia to hang out with you?” deadpanned Sadie.
    I felt the too-quick thrust of laughter. They all wanted to get off this subject. Talk moved back to homecoming. Claude bowed his head to focus on his pasta. I could sense the table’s relief that the moment had passed, along with a lingering over-awareness that it had happened at all.
    “’Scuse me.” Holding my tray, I stood up, dazed and unsteady— my low blood pressure, Dr. Pipini had warned, would kick back if I did anything too quickly.
    Rachel stood, too. “You need me?”
    “No. I’m fine, thanks. Stay put, finish lunch. I’m…just…” My vision blurred again, my legs were clay, propelling me in a crude, choppy animation from the lunch table, toward the tray drop, and then toward the exit doors.
    Upstairs, in a quiet hall of the pre-renovated science wing, I sank down to sit beside a row of chunky metal lockers, and with trembling fingers I stuck in my earbuds. Weregirl. I’d searched them last night—they were a newish band out of Cork, Ireland, with only one studio album,
Half-Life,
to their name. I’d finally dropped deep into one of my bottom-of-the-sea sleeps before the download had finished. And then I’d completely forgotten about it.
    Now I pressed play on the title track. The effect was instant, stunning. The grace and clarity of a simple vocal melody skated the surface of deep-rumbling bass drum strength. The music spun me out of the moment and washed me onto calmer shores, burying me for its duration in a safer place that my conscious mind couldn’t dredge. Caught on the hook of this song, I was holding it, and it was holding me, and I was still here.
    I listened once, then twice, and then I let go of the song, and I was left with the hard fact of him. I could even feel his name, even if I couldn’t have said it.
    Finally I stood, and somehow, like some wandering nomad who’d never been inside this school, I got to the front lobby, past security, and through the doors. Outside, the air was almost warm, one of those fall afternoons that was just a touch too muggy to be pleasant. My body matched it, a dull thudding, and my head ached. My hands didn’t speak the same language as my brain; it took four tries of my fingers to key up Mom’s cell phone number.
    She answered on the first ring. She’d been waiting; I knew it to my core.
    “I need to come home. I’ve got a headache.”
    “Of course. I’ll pick you up.”
    “I think I remembered, sort of, about him.”
    “Yes, yes, yes, all right—that’s what I was…okay.”
    “Come get me.”
    “Ten minutes. Just wait right there.”
    I ended the call and plugged back into the music. Sat on the steps with my fingers gripped around my knees. The locked muscles of my body held me like a robot. I jabbed the play button.
Half-Life,
track two. A brisk, more upbeat song. It pumped a blood-beat rhythm inside me, the catchy snap of verse and lyrics dancing its ring around me, blocking out my bucking, kicking thoughts.
    Hadn’t I heard it before? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that this music had the power to transport me somewhere better, temporarily.
    But it couldn’t hide me from the