Change of Heart Read Online Free PDF

red ink gleaned from a Skittle with a dab of toothpaste in the lid of a juice bottle, and coffee with a bit of water in a second lid, and then I’d combined them to get just the right shade of his skin—a burnished, deep molasses.
    I had already outlined his features in black—the broad brow, the strong chin, the hawk’s nose. I’d used a shank to shave ebony curls from a picture of a coal mine in a
National Geographic
and added a dab of shampoo to make a chalky paint. With the broken tip of a pencil, I had transferred the color to my makeshift canvas.
    God, he was beautiful.
    It was after three a.m., but to be honest, I don’t sleep much. When I do, I find myself getting up to go to the bathroom—as little as I eat these days, food passes through me at lightning speed. I get sick to my stomach; I get headaches. The thrush in my mouth and throat makes it hard to swallow. Instead, I use my insomnia to fuel my artwork.
    Tonight, I’d had the sweats. I was soaked through by the time I woke up, and after I stripped off my sheets and my scrubs, Ididn’t want to lie down on the mattress again. Instead, I had pulled out my painting and started re-creating Adam. But I got sidetracked by the other portraits I’d finished of him, hanging on my cell wall: Adam standing in the same pose he’d first struck when he was modeling for the college art class I taught; Adam’s face when he opened his eyes in the morning. Adam, looking over his shoulder, the way he’d been when I shot him.
    “I need to do it,” Shay Bourne said. “It’s the only way.”
    He had been utterly silent since this afternoon’s arrival on I-tier; I wondered who he was having a conversation with at this hour of the night. But the pod was empty. Maybe he was having a nightmare. “Bourne?” I whispered. “Are you okay?”
    “Who’s … there?”
    The words were hard for him—not quite a stutter; more like each syllable was a stone he had to bring forth. “I’m Lucius. Lucius DuFresne,” I said. “You talking to someone?”
    He hesitated. “I
think
I’m talking to you.”
    “Can’t sleep?”
    “I can sleep,” Shay said. “I just don’t want to.”
    “You’re luckier than I am, then,” I replied.
    It was a joke, but he didn’t take it that way. “You’re no luckier than me, and I’m no unluckier than you,” he said.
    Well, in a way, he was right. I may not have been handed down the same sentence as Shay Bourne, but like him, I would die within the walls of this prison—sooner rather than later.
    “Lucius,” he said. “What are
you
doing?”
    “I’m painting.”
    There was a beat of silence. “Your cell?”
    “No. A portrait.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m an artist.”
    “Once, in school, an art teacher said I had classic lips,” Shay said. “I still don’t know what that means.”
    “It’s a reference to the ancient Greeks and Romans,” I explained. “And the art that we see represented on—”
    “Lucius? Did you see on TV today … the Red Sox …”
    Everyone on I-tier had a team they followed, myself included. We each kept meticulous score of their league standings, and we debated the fairness of umpire and ref calls as if they were law and we were Supreme Court judges. Sometimes, like us, our teams had their hopes dashed; other times we got to share their World Series. But it was still preseason; there hadn’t been any televised games today.
    “Schilling was sitting at a table,” Shay added, still struggling to find the right words. “And there was a little girl—”
    “You mean the fund-raiser? The one up at the hospital?”
    “That little girl,” Shay said. “I’m going to give her my heart.”
    Before I could respond, there was a loud crash and the thud of flesh smacking against the concrete floor. “Shay?” I called. “Shay?!”
    I pressed my face up against the Plexiglas. I couldn’t see Shay at all, but I heard something rhythmic smacking his cell door. “Hey!” I yelled at the top of