Torn Read Online Free

smug. What does a dead person have to be smug about?
    ‘Why can’t you just be yourself?’
    Tara shakes her head. ‘Oh, Alice. How could you have forgotten? Being yourself gets you precisely nowhere. You are a nobody. You might as well not exist.’
    ‘That’s not true!’
    ‘It is, and you know it. What do you reckon people would say at
your
funeral? “Oh, yeah, Alice. I think she sat behind me in history …”’
    I’ve had enough. I head towards the door, pretty sure she (it) won’t follow me downstairs.
    ‘Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t finished with you yet.’
    ‘Look, Tara, I’m really sorry you’re dead.’ Feels like something I should have said sooner. I slump back into the chair.
    ‘Are you?’ Her eyes lock onto mine.
    ‘Of course I am! But I need to get on with my life. I can’t have you popping up all the time, reminding me about it – making me feel worse than I already do. I’M SORRY! It was an accident!’
    She says nothing.
    I’ve never been good with awkward silences. ‘An accident,’ I say again. It sounds pathetically inadequate.
    Tara fixes me with a withering look. ‘Are you sure about that?’
    ‘Of course I’m sure!’ Yes. I am sure. Absolutely sure.
    ‘Liar!’
    My tears spring from nowhere. ‘Shut up! Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone!’ Sobbing now, and trying to ignore the voice inside my head.
    ‘You have to find out what happened,’ she says.
    ‘I know what happened!’
    ‘Do you?’ Her tone is reasonable.
    ‘Yes! No … I don’t know.’ My thoughts are tumbling and stumbling and scaring me.
    ‘You
have
to find out. You owe me that at least.’ She’s right. I don’t want her to be right.
    ‘Tell me what to do.’ Resigned now.
    ‘Why don’t you start by talking to that dykey best friend of yours?’
    ‘She’s not a … don’t say that!’ I hate that word.
    ‘Yeah, whatever you say. Just talk to her.’
    A shout from downstairs makes me jump. It’s Dad, bellowing that dinner’s ready. I’m suddenly aware of the garlicky oniony aroma wafting into the room. It usually makes my saliva glands go into overdrive, but today it turns my stomach. I wonder if I can get away with skipping dinner. Doubtful. Dad’s been watching carefully, making sure I eat. Cooking all my favourite meals. He says I’ve lost weight; he can be so clueless sometimes. How can he not notice the flesh spilling over the top of these bloody jeans?
    Tara’s gone. Of course she’s gone. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened. She didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke, or dissolve into nothingness or walk through a wall. She was there and then not there, but I don’t know what happened in between. I must pay attention next time. But maybe there won’t be a next time. Maybe my madness is over. Please let it be over.

3
     
    I’m meant to be hanging out with Cass on Sunday. We usually watch a DVD in her room or something. That is what my life is supposed to be like: spending time with my best mate, going shopping in town and maybe going to the cinema with a boy. Not going to funerals (or memorial services or whatever). Not talking to dead girls. Not thinking the unthinkable.
    I told Cass I might go round later. But it doesn’t seem right somehow, us getting back to our old routine. How can it be the same as before? Are we supposed to just pretend that nothing’s changed?
    Dad made me eat an extra helping of roasties at lunch. My stomach feels stretched tight like a drum.
    I’m lying on my bed, trying – and failing – not to think about Tara. Why does she want me to speak to Cass? What could she possibly tell me that I don’t already know?
    I was there. I know exactly what happened.
    Except I wasn’t there when it
actually
happened, was I? When Tara Chambers breathed her last breath.
    My phone rings and rescues me from my thoughts. I don’t recognize the number.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Er … hello. Is that Alice?’ It’s a boy. A boy is