The Alignment Read Online Free Page B

adjust, and I try to remember if the weather was this nice on my way to the clinic. The skin on my forehead feels itchy and tight, but the relief I feel walking away from the clinic is a potent amphetamine injected straight into my heart. I swing my leg over the Ninja and start it up. The ride toward the highway passes in slow motion. As soon as I hit the entrance ramp I open it up and fly.

Chapter 3
    Liv
    T hank god Trey Bevan is no conversationalist. I wasn’t sure how to break it to him that his truck and I don’t get along. I may not be able to forgive his driving, but it doesn’t matter. It’s going to take a lot more than a nonfatal car accident to shake me. It was nice of him to let me borrow his truck, even nicer that he thought to grab my stuff out of my car. Especially the Pepto-Bismol. My volatile stomach turned on me again at the clinic. No warning, just like the last time. I can’t believe I chugged the rest of the bottle.
    I sit in the truck preparing myself to drive it again, wishing I had demanded a rental car. I should’ve asked him when I had the syringe poised over his face. But right now, I need to run by the pharmacy and pick up another bottle of Pepto.
    Maybe this nausea is a new spin on the torment, the latest method to keep me reminded of my solitude. I can’t deny it seems at its worst when I’m around other people. It’s like some torturer has taken over my life, assigned to the duty of keeping me on my toes. Preventing comfort. Hindering rest. And now I’ve conjured up some bogeyman to explain what must be simple nerves resulting from a cross-country move and a run-in with the jerk of the century. The only prescription is time. Everything is better with time. Not perfect, but better.
    I start the engine, jam it into first gear, and the truck lurches forward. Luckily, I can pull forward through the empty parking space in front of me. As I shove it into second, the grind of the gears shakes the whole vehicle. I miss third, and the engine revs so loud it sounds like it’s going to explode. I stomp on the clutch and try to find second again. I’m not sure if I hit second or fourth but finally I’m cruising, if you can call it that. I try to avoid red lights as I hit the pharmacy and drive home.
    Coyote Dog rises from his lookout on the porch to greet me but ducks and lowers his tail when I miss another gear and the truck shudders and dies fifty feet from the house. Close enough. Maybe I should call a cab tomorrow—but I doubt they have cabs here. I drop down from the truck and trudge up to the house, immediately nudging the thermostat up a few degrees and changing into jeans and an old thermal shirt as soon as I get inside. My pinky catches in a hole near the cuff, and I make a mental note to buy some new clothes. I pull off both socks. Pine floor and bare feet. A pleasant combination to make me feel at home when home has never been so far away.
    I go to work cleaning, starting with the dirty windows obscuring my mountain view so still and perfect it seems to be painted on the windows instead of dwelling outside in real life. Throwing myself into the task relieves me like a deep meditation. The Zen of a rag and some window cleaner. Doctors should prescribe it.
    Night approaches, but my appetite lags too far behind to be noticed for dinner. I make some oatmeal—my fallback when the idea of eating a meal seems more like punishment than pleasure—and go outside to the back porch with a piece of cheese in my palm in case Coyote Dog comes around. With my bowl empty, I stand and notice Coyote Dog peeking at me from around the side of the house. I’m an awful throw but I try anyway, and the cheese lands close enough for him to snatch it up after a calculating look at me.
    I wander to the other end of the porch, and suddenly I’m knee deep in floor boards, crying out and cursing as if there’s someone around to hear me. The knee that didn’t plunge through the rotted boards slams into hard