Puddle Jumping Read Online Free

contemplating climbing the lattice that ran up the side of his house and swinging like a monkey over to the tree limb closest to his window. Just to get a glimpse of him. Just to be close enough to him to feel even a tenth of the kind of heart racing, blood-pumping excitement I’d felt in the less than ten minutes I’d been with him that day.
    I wish now I would have done just that.
    But I chickened out. Instead of being that badass girl I’d dreamt of being before I got hit by lightning, I turned around and went back home. To my room, where all my questions were still unanswered. Where my heart felt numb and empty all at once because I liked this boy and I knew nothing about his situation.
    I just knew what it felt like when he’d said my name.
    What it felt like to stand with him by the train tracks.
    What it had felt like to have him walk away from me and leave me more confused than I’d ever been in my entire life.
    That was the night I’d vowed to forget about Colton Neely because I was scared of what I might find out. My young brain came up with a million excuses as to why I was doing it, but I am honest enough with you now to say I was scared. It was within three months of that night that I met Joseph through his sister Tracy, and we started dating. Because he was interested and I thought he was cute.
    He was my first real kiss and we had fun together, though nothing inside of me tingled or lit up like it had the day at the fair. In essence, I just went with the flow, ignoring any information about the artist I had known once upon a time, in another life. Here and there, I would hear he was opening an exhibit somewhere amazing. I would catch glimpses of his artwork as I turned the newspaper over to the comics to eat my cereal on Sundays.
    That void . . . that damn hole in my heart . . . it never really closed. Even after starting high school and becoming a member of the Debate Team so I could decide if being a lawyer was what I wanted to do. Even after helping Harper plan the school dances. Babysitting as much as I could to make extra money. Even after all that, there was still something missing.
    I focused on trying to become a better person than the mean little girl who told a talented artist to color inside the lines all those years ago. It was kind of like floating in the middle of a swimming pool on a raft. Complacent. Happy because it was routine. It was life.
    Harper and I hung out.
    Joseph and I made out.
    Homework assignments were handed in.
    I was just there.
    But life isn’t really about just getting by. Right when you’ve lulled yourself into a false sense of security, it likes to throw in a plot twist. Keep you on your toes.
    I had specifically not looked into Colton’s ‘condition’. And yes, I’m using finger quotes.
    There was something inside me that didn’t want to know. Something that made me think if I knew exactly what it was he was experiencing, then it would change my memories of him or sway me to look at him differently. And I didn’t want that because the ones I did have of him, even when coupled with my near-death experiences, were pretty good. I felt good when I thought of him.
    To have the knowledge of what was ‘wrong’ could have caused me to second-guess and analyze every last move he’d ever made. My interactions with him. His mother’s sanity.
    I was really, really good at pretending and ignoring things.
    Weren’t you?
    Anyway. I’d had this misconception it meant he was handicapped. Obviously there would be a stigma attached to him, right? What I didn’t know at the time was there are so many people on the spectrum that we’re familiar with.
    Like, celebrities.
    You can look it up.
    Would you ever know it? Probably not. But if you did, would it make you look at them differently? Would you scour their body language and everything to see if you can say, “Oh, yeah. That totally makes sense.”
    This is why I didn’t want to know. I thought maybe I’d never see