Because I'm Disposable Read Online Free PDF

abs and chest. Then I moved up: up to his full lips, open to capture some of the liquid pouring down his face; up to his eyes, closed in rapture. His eyes opened. And speared me.
    I couldn’t move for a moment, just stayed pinned to the spot, locked in a staring contest with him. I’d been caught spying. My stomach tumbled in mortification, and my heart raced into oblivion. What must have been a hundred years later, I recovered control over my limbs and ducked down below the windowsill. Ugh … I would never be able to face Link again.
    * * * * *
    I had trouble sleeping that night. My dreams were extreme and disjointed, and I tossed and turned most of the night away. Sleep was unpleasant from the outset, with my very first dream being a half-memory, half-imagination quasi-nightmare that started with me walking into English class my first day back at school after attempting to quit life.
    I slid into the room unnoticed and took the seat in the far back corner, next to Link. The room was darker than usual, like half the fluorescents bulbs overhead were out, and the air had a murky quality, like I was seeing through stagnant lake water. He didn’t spare me a glance, just stared with intent at a notebook open on his desk. The bell rang, and Mrs. Fields clapped her hands to gain the students’ attention.
    “Today, class, we’re going to read from one anothers’ journals. Mr. Devaux will read first, from Callista Tanner’s writings. Lincoln …” The hand she held out in invitation to Link was knobby-knuckled and little more than wrinkled skin and bone.
    Link moved with purpose to the podium. He had that notebook clutched tightly under one arm. I couldn’t tell for sure, but there might have been a paisle y design on the dark blue cover, almost like Corrine’s diary. When he set it on the wood stand, he looked in my direction, but it was like he was looking over me, around me, through me. Then he read.
    “Daddy clocked me with Mom’s favorite vase tonight. The green one with the hand-painted roses on the front. He threw it at me because I forgot to vacuum the living room rug today. It didn’t break when it hit me, but it shattered into a thousand pieces when it fell to the floor.”
    Dear God. That had actually happened. Why were my words, my story, in Corrine’s diary? How did Link know? And now he was telling the entire class.
    Link continued, “I knew I was in for it the second the porcelain cracked against the oak floor. Why couldn’t we have had carpeting instead? Daddy’s face swelled with anger and turned an almost-shade of purple. I didn’t need to wait around to find out what he was going to do next. I already knew. So, I took off through the house as though the devil himself was after me. In a way, he was.”
    Every word that Link read from that horrible book, that journal I didn’t write—wouldn’t write in a million years—it all tore through my mind, cutting into me the way the pieces of that broken vase had cut into my bare feet when I’d stepped on them trying to get away.
    I wanted Link to stop, wanted to leap from my seat, rip that notebook away from him, and tear it to shreds with my bare hands. But I couldn’t move. Some invisible force was holding me immobile in my seat, forcing me to relive that terrifying night.
    He read on. “I don’t know why I thought I could hide from him in the basement. He was right behind me on the stairs, and the minute I was back on solid ground, he slammed into me, knocking me into the washing machine.”
    Pain sliced through my shoulder, where it had connected with the washer that night, and radiated out into my neck and down my spine.
    “Then, he was even angrier that I’d dented the metal. He backhanded me, knocking me into the dryer. Thank God I didn’t dent that too …”
    A phantom blow slammed into my cheek, the same way my father’s slap had caught me. Twice more, Link read about the abuse my father had inflicted on me that night —and twice