Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) Read Online Free

surrounding me once more. I’m back in the water. This time, Myles is submerged with me and Stevie is gone.
    No, The thought echoes in my skull.
    My hand is still in Myles’ palm, clamped tight so I can’t break free and swim on my own. It’s okay, he tells me. He’s gone back.
    Back where? I ask, trying desperately and uselessly to paddle away with my free hand. The door has disappeared completely, but I can’t help searching for it.  
    No. It’s his turn to say it. He wraps his arms around me, and I try pushing him away, thrashing almost as much as the water around us. It’s no use. I’m sorry, Sophie. The words tumble into my head. He’s gone. Then his arms are around mine, trapping me, dragging me down, down, down.
     

    Chapter 3
    The Surface
    “Awake and unafraid. Asleep or dead?”–My Chemical Romance
     
    Waking up is like shaking a child from a deep sleep. One minute I’m barely conscious, groping around drowsily in the world behind my eyelids, and the next, I’m questioning everything, gasping for oxygen. As soon as I have enough in my lungs, I spit it back out. I’m clawing at my chest; I want to rip it open so the air can get at it that way.
    “Shh .” Hands on me, keeping my wrists still. “You don’t need that anymore.” Myles.
    Are we still swimming or are we drowning?
    “ What’s wrong?” Jade. He’s still here.
    “ She’s okay,” Myles says. “It’s hard at first.”
    Then he directs his attention to me again. His hands are on my face now and the rest of his body presses into mine, preventing it from moving. I should be trying to push him off but I find myself sinking into him. I want this. I want this almost as much as I want air.
    “ Sophie,” he says. “You need to stay here now.”
    “ No,” I hiss out though I don’t know what I’m trying to deny.
    “ It’s okay,” he says. You think he’d learn by now not to say that anymore. “Just open your eyes.”
    I try twisting my head away from his, like that will stop anything.
    “Sophie,” he repeats. This time, the tone of his voice has changed. Firmer. So commanding that I have no choice but to freeze and pay attention . Nothing else matters. “I want you to open your eyes. Right now.”
    My eyelids unscrew themselves as if a thread behind them has been cut. At first, I only see white because I’m staring at the ceiling. Everything is quiet. I’m afraid that I’m still in between, still about to go under another wave. But then I start to hear things. Someone is breathing next to me and it sounds damp, like they’ve stopped crying but the tears are still lingering, ready to be set free at any moment. There’s rough skin against my hand, squeezing. And there’s a faint buzzing that I can’t place as well.
    Opening your eyes after you’ve died, after you’ve come back as something else, is like trying to look through an Etch-a-Sketch while the image is being shaken away: completely unstable and unable to be trusted. When my sight adjusts and everything moving slows down a little bit, the room is too bright. Too colorful. The blue sheet covering me is so harsh that my eyes start tearing.
    “ You can blink,” I hear Myles say. “But you have to stay awake.”
    My eyes shut and then open back up. I want to turn my head but I can’t. My entire body is stiff, like I haven’t moved it in days or weeks. Maybe I haven’t.
    “ Try to move,” Myles instructs from somewhere to my left. “Just take your time.”
    Slowly, my body comes back to life. Once my eyes start blinking regularly, I can shift my view from left to right. Things still spin once in a while, becoming blurry and then ultra-clear, but it doesn’t last long.  I can see now that Myles is standing near the bed, watching everything I do. Once I know where he is, I try to find Jade. Everything in the room blurs into a brown and white mass until my eyes finally settle on something solid: my brother.
    I don’t think I’ve eve r seen him so tired