On the Fringe Read Online Free Page B

was really hurt. But he would eventually get better. Daniel wouldn’t.
    My brother watched his best friend die.
    At some point I ended up in Matthew’s hospital room, though I couldn’t remember how. His head was wrapped up like a mummy with a pair of purplish, puffy eyelids peeking out through the bandages. There was swelling, pressure, and a concussion; but my brain was drowning in a confusion of medical terms that meant nothing to me. Peering out of the rain-spotted window, I listened to the voices outside Matthew’s stuffy room while Dad stood next to Mom. She was slumped over in a chair next to Matthew, humming a consoling, but unfamiliar tune. The silver ring Daniel had given me kept me company as I twisted it around my finger over and over again.
    Matthew stirred then went still again. Around him, loud machines beeped and blinked, rhythmically dripping liquid through the IV tube into his hand. I had no idea how he would be able to wake to this nightmare.
    How would I?

Daniel
    I didn’t die instantly, though it probably looked that way. I heard myself screaming, but now wonder if the sound ever left my throat. Matthew was strangely quiet, the outrage of it all probably shocking him into silence. I remember trying to look around, being unable to tell the ground from the walls or my hand from the background. Everything was melted together into a muddy blur, faded color dripping all over the place like a messed-up painting.
    The pain. Was there even a word or a way to describe it?
    It felt like a vise compressing my head. I could no longer think or move, unable to see or hear anything. Somehow I managed to scream out until everything around me shut down to black. I searched through the dark in my mind, trying to find a way out. Just when I thought I found it, the pain stopped.
    At last.
    Finally I was free from pain and confusion. In fact, I was numb−then the realization of what that meant hit: the bullet in my brain had killed me.
    I turned to look at Matthew holding a bleeding head in his lap, and wanted to look away. I didn’t want to see the bright red soaking into my best friend’s shirt, or listen to his familiar voice begging for me to wake up.
    “Matt—” I yelled, trying to touch his shoulder. But my hand passed right through him.
    The screaming erupted a few seconds later. Instinctively, I put my hands to my ears to block out the noise, but the voices only seemed to get louder. I turned to the left, then to the right, and then leapt over the couch, ran down the hall, and was out the door in half a second.
    I knew I was dead and that the body back there was mine. That part was easy. But I wanted to know why I was still here, wherever this was? Where was my life after death?
    Where was heaven?
    Trying to avoid the parked cars scattered haphazardly along the curb, I ran down the driveway into the dark street, and realized my legs were moving along clumsily like I was still alive. I jerked to a stop in front of the next empty car, as if someone had hit pause. Everything instantly stalled as I waited there gazing into the dark windows, wondering….
    Without moving my feet, I tried willing myself to go forward.
    It’s all in my head, I kept telling myself when nothing happened, even after some intense concentration. Still, I kept at it, trying to make my mind conquer my legs—again, and again , almost giving up, until the slight pull of something gently nudged me forward.
    I could feel it…like a gasp of air being sucked out of me, followed by a kind of pressure squeezing my body (or spirit, or soul—whatever I was now). Next thing I knew, I was floating in the middle of a grey pickup truck, my neck and head sticking out above the roof, my torso and legs right near the stick shift.
    I told myself to move again, this time away from the truck. It was jerky at first, and then I was traveling smoothly, floating…drifting away from the house…down the road…through a thick cement wall, across a muddy