Days Like This Read Online Free PDF Page A

phone. I hadn’t spoken to Graham in
almost a year. Not since he came here for me after I left North Carolina and
broke his heart. Since I gave him back his ring. And now he was calling me.
    “I don’t mean
to call like this, but—”
    “Wait, you’re
on my mom’s phone.”
    The only
reason he would be on Mom’s phone would be to get my new number. He shouldn’t
need that. My heart raced because I knew. I felt it as my world tilted from
balanced to out of control. Graham sighed on the line, and I could almost see
it, too. He had this way of responding that showed in his whole body. Every
emotion—the sighing, the laughing, the anger—encompassed all of him.
    “You need to
come home, Cass.”
    Come home. See
him. Really see him. The thought made my stomach jump.
    “Woo! Cassie,
I got fries and ice cream!” June yelled as she busted through the door. I
turned my back to her. Thousands of scenarios blew through my mind. Mom was
hurt or worse. All because I wasn’t there. Did I call her this week? I couldn’t
remember.
    “What—why?”
    But I knew the
answer. Graham Tucker and I made a pact a long time ago, long before we were
ever anything more than friends. If something happened, he would be the one who
called me, not some doctor. He would be there. But I needed him to say it,
because I didn’t want whatever it was to be true.
    “She’s in the
hospital, Cass. You’re the only one who can make decisions. You have to come.
She needs you.”
    I swallowed.
“What happened?”
    Graham grew
quiet and around him I could hear the familiar sounds of the psychiatric wing
at St. John’s. The hum of the radiator from the fifties that still hadn’t been
replaced because the residents were crazy, why did they care? And I could hear
the nurses moving around because they talked louder there instead of in hushed
voices like most places. Especially Sheila. And he was probably standing in the
blue waiting room, the one that had a puzzle of a yellow cat with the missing
piece in the tail. It was hundreds of miles away yet it was still in my head,
still with me no matter how far away I was.
    “She almost
burned the house down,” he said. I sucked in some air; let it fill my lungs
because it was the only way I wasn’t going to lose it. Graham paused, and I
wondered what he was thinking. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I couldn’t
think. He started talking faster. “Mrs. Pearson went by to check on her and saw
the flames from the window. She was sitting on the couch while the fire burned
in the living room, and she lost it when they saved her.”
    I closed my
eyes, inhaled, exhaled. I tried not to think about the fact that I was talking
to him after eleven months. That my mom was in trouble. I don’t think I called
this week; I should’ve. My chest was caving in. My head was spinning. What was
I going to do? I couldn’t drop everything. Finals and projects and—
    “She needs you,”
Graham said. His voice was low, and I could tell that he didn’t want to have
this conversation with me. But he would because he had to, and because even
though there were states stretched between us, he was right next to me. He was part
of me.
    “You promised,”
he added, his voice husky.
    Those little
words and then nothing else mattered. If anyone had said them to me, anyone, I
could’ve not given in. I could’ve stalled and figured out another solution. But
not him. It almost wasn’t fair that he could still have this effect on me.
    “I’ll need a
couple days.” It felt like I was holding my breath underwater. Like I was
waiting for someone to rescue me, or to tell me to come out now because the storm
had passed. But no one would say it. No one could stop it or change it, not
when I was this far under. “I’ll be there,” I said.
    “Okay, Cass,”
he said. He said my old nickname, and I froze. I could remember the last time
he called me that, when he proposed and we spent the weekend locked away in
some cabin in the