Forever Freaky Read Online Free PDF Page A

time. For instance, my mom would
mention seeing somebody, an old acquaintance, and grandma would say
Oh, I thought he died. And then a couple days later mom would hear
that the person actually died. Things like that happened all the
time. After a while my mom started to wonder if, maybe, my
grandmother had actually caused the person to die. Really, it was
impossible to tell for sure. So mom decided that the less she knew,
the better off she was—and she was right.
    “You feeling better?” she asked.
    “A little,” I said.
    “You know your father is worried about
you.”
    I didn’t know what there was for him to worry
about. My dad had no clue about my problems. Neither my mom nor I
ever told him. How could we? He was a very well-grounded guy. Some
people just don’t believe in spirits and other weird things, no
matter how much you try to convince them. If he knew half the
things that went on in my head on any given day, he’d have me under
a 72-hour psychiatric hold or worse. “Why is he worried about me?”
I asked. “Tell him to worry about himself.”
    She shrugged. “It’s just your weight.”
    “I have a high metabolism.”
    “Well…”
    “I know. He’s thinks I’m anorexic or bulimic
or something.”
    “He thinks you’re not getting enough protein.
He thinks you need to start eating meat again.”
    “I can’t do that,” I said.
    “I know, not eating meat is supposed to be
healthy, but you don’t really seem that healthy.”
    “It doesn’t have anything to do with being
healthy.”
    “Then what?”
    “Do I have to explain?”
    “I wish you would,” she said.
    “I can’t eat meat, because every time I touch
it, every time I try to eat it, I have these flashes.”
    She frowned. “Flashes? What flashes?”
    “I see the animal it came from. I see how
they killed it…. I just can’t eat meat, all right? If Dad is
worried about me not getting enough protein, tell him to get me
some protein powder or something.”
    “I didn’t know that,” she said somberly.
“Your grandmother never had that problem.”
    “Well, I’m a bigger freak than she was,” I
said.
    “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” she
said.
    “I’m just telling the truth.”
    I needed to lie down for a while. I got up
and left my mom sitting there in the kitchen. If I let myself think
of it, I started to feel sorry for her. It must not be easy to be
the mother of a freak. She wanted to make things better, but
couldn’t. How could she? She couldn’t control what I saw, what I
knew, what I felt. Nobody could, not even me.
     
    ***************
     
    The next morning I almost didn’t go to
school. There was more than usual I didn’t want to face. Jack would
be looking for me at lunch. He would want to give me copies of
information to help me retrieve Mary Jo Mason, which, honestly, I’d
never wanted to do in the first place. He would ask me a million
annoying questions. I’d have to fully explain yesterday’s freaky
event. Then, worse of all, he would probably thank me for saving
his life. What an awful thing to do!—thanking me for saving his
life. As though I had had any choice in the matter. Something had
simply snapped in my head, and I had acted. It had absolutely
nothing to do with me. As far as I was concerned, he could have
ended up a crushed piece of meat pinned to the light post.
    When it was time for lunch, I didn’t go to
the lunchroom. Melody would be looking for me, but I didn’t care. I
went straight outside. It was a warm early spring day. The sun was
bright and the sky was a pale blue. There was plenty of fresh air
to breathe. I sat on one of the wooden benches along the walkway
that snaked through the campus. I had a good view of the student
parking lot. There was only one cop car parked near the front now.
Nobody was around, although people might start straying outside
after they finished eating, to kill time before going to their next
class. It all should have been peaceful, but I sensed a