Six Feet Over It Read Online Free Page B

kind of in the middle of something.”
    I close my eyes. Count silently to five. “Yeah,” I say, “I can see that. And she’ll probably walk. She just means if it’s dark when they finish. Just in case. Later.”
    “What’s your father doing?”
    I shake my head.
    Wist, wist, wist.
    Poor Kai. Between Wade and Meredith it’s a miracle she ever makes it home before midnight. She’s on the track team at school. They practice all the time, which is partly what absolves Kai of any obligation to help in the graves, but on the downside has left her more than once waiting on the curb outside school for Mr. I Love My Graveyard! and Ms. I’m Painting Some Seagulls! to remember to pick her up.
    “Just please make sure someone goes to get her, okay? Don’t make her wait in the dark by herself. Again.”
    Meredith nods, already back at the shore.
    Waves crash.
    I lug my backpack upstairs, turn the water on in the bath, and retreat to the cool dark of my room, where moving boxes are still waiting to be unpacked, piled against the walls, stacked in the closet. They still smell like the ocean. I did not pack them and have no idea what’s inside—a situation clutter experts say means I should just get rid of it all. Which would leave me with one drawer of clothes, a few pens, and some library books.
    Meredith’s waves crash over even the sound of the filling tub. I pour in some kind of seashore-themed soap, drop my clothes on the floor, turn off the light, and sink into the dark, hot water. My hip bones knock awkwardly against the tub, Yorks lately being one of the few foods I can stomach. My head beneath the suds, the waves finally give it a rest.

    “Leigh.”
    The bathwater is tepid.
    “Sorry, I really have to pee,” Kai whispers. “Don’t listen!”
    “Don’t look !” I pour more soap, swish the water around.
    She rolls her eyes, laughs. Still in her track shorts. The sun is nearly set.
    “Did you walk?”
    She shrugs. “Not dark yet.”
    “I told them—”
    “Oh, awesome.” She smiles at the mirror. “I am a girl!” Six months, three days of remission and the dandelion fluff on her head is just now growing back in silky curls, different from the stick-straight it used to be and finally long enough to hold back with a barrette. I’ve missed her hair: fair like Meredith’s, her eyes as dreamily blue. “I’ve got chemo curls and chemo boobs,” she says, clutching her definitely bigger bosom through her sports bra. “It was good for something. ”
    Of all of us, you’d think Kai would be maddest about living here, but she’s just—not. Yes, she misses the ocean, too, but she is able to attend school again at last, and she loves this big house; having her own room instead of a towel-covered sofa near a plastic vomit bucket is her actual dream come true. Living in the cemetery, she’s never felt so alive.
    “Well, sure. That and the whole ‘not dying’ thing. Close your eyes.” I sigh and stand up in the lukewarm water. She smiles, blindly wraps a towel around me.
    “You’re too skinny,” she says.
    “Look who’s talking.” An empty thing to say. She is not skinny. She is Meredith all over—small but not wiry like Wade and me. Lean. Two years my senior, but I’m three inches taller so people always assume she’s younger.
    She ignores me. Gnaws at my admittedly bony elbow.
    “Go put a sandwich in your piehole, dummy. I need a shower.”
    I have mortgaged my sanity for hers. I’ll sell graves every day forever keep her this happy.
    I pull on clean pajamas and summon the energy to eat a bowl of cereal, get in bed, and finally make a decent effort to try to figure out what the hell Ovid is getting at. Because it is true—I do have a quiz tomorrow.

two
    “OHHH, LOOK AT THAT goddamned angel!” Wade says. “We need that one!” It’s early Saturday morning, and we’ve left Meredith and Kai sleeping, sun not yet above the dense hillside pines above Hangtown’s Main Street, hiding