We Were Never Here Read Online Free Page A

life as an office person.”
    I hear Thelma giggle.
    My mother breathes in, deeply. “I’ll bring Daddy’s iPad tomorrow, okay? What can I load it up with for you? Please tell me Animal Planet shows. PBS?”
    Actually I love Animal Planet, especially Too Cute , which really is so cute it slays me, and my mother loves to make me watch Nova with her, even though it bores me to tears, but what I want now are the stupidest shows I can possibly get my hands on.“I don’t care,” I say. “ Switched at Birth. 90210. Old Gossip Girl .”
    â€œI think I get it,” she says. “But more importantly, or I should say, more imminently , Dr. Malik should be in soon.”
    Imminently.
    Even though they are pumping me through with saline and antibiotics, and also an antinausea medicine that, if it’s working, makes me wonder what life would feel like if it wasn’t working, I know I’m not getting any better. Because it is really true: sometimes you just know. Outside: school is starting tomorrow. I can picture everyone in his or her first-day-of-school clothes, the hallways all bright and shining and ready. All the teachers coming out from behind their desks to introduce themselves. Lockers. Empty notebooks. That smell .
    What I have here, all I have really, is a new hospital bracelet with my name and birth date and Social Security number typed on. That says to me, this is permanent . And I have my mother, who now looks around as if she’s going to tell me a secret. “It’s not salmonella either. Did the pain people come back? Are you comfortable, sweetheart?” She takes my hand.
    She’s going to tell me I’m dying , I think. I will never see my friends again. I will never cuddle with Mabel and fall asleep to her snoring. I will never go to Spain or any Spanish-speaking country, not Mexico or Venezuela or Costa Rica or Puerto Rico, which I know is not a country. I will never become a vet. In this moment I realize that is always what I’ve wanted to be. A vet! Now I know, but now, of course, it can’t ever happen. Also, I will never again hit the hockey ball around in Lydia’s backyard or go shopping with her and Dee-Dee, or goout to eat with them, or even pathetically wait outside of Lolly Adams’s party until a junior from my art class finally lets us in so I can down three beers and make out with Joris, the Dutch exchange student.
    I let my mother hold my hand, but I can’t talk.
    I will never wear an actual gown. It’s not a word I’ve ever used before—they’re just dresses—but now the sound of it, a gown , sounds so beautiful and so far away.
    â€œMom?” I say.
    She covers my hand with her other hand so that her hand is creating a hand sandwich. Ha, I think. A hand sandwich. Cheeky. But really I just feel her wedding ring, cold and sharp.
    â€œMm-hmm?” she says.
    She says it sort of distractedly, which is strange, because I’m so sick and could be dying and maybe just this once she could not think about work or what’s for dinner, or if Zoe is having sex with Tim. I know she thinks about that, because I hear her talking to my dad about it when they think we’re asleep. I don’t think they are having sex, but what I do know now is that I will never have sex. There has been no one I have wanted to have sex with yet, minus Michael L, but I’m not really thinking about it because all I can hope for is a kiss, just one day, a surprise. But we can’t go anywhere from here. This is nowhere.
    â€œAm I going to die?”
    My mother looks up, startled. “My goodness, no,” she says. She brings the hand sandwich to her heart. “No, no, no. We just have to figure out what’s going on. And then they can fix it. Dying? No.” She shakes her head vigorously. “And because youare going to live, we really have to get you out of bed. You need to move around!”
    The