Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover Read Online Free PDF

was driving home from one of her do-gooder meetings last night and had a car accident. She drove off a cliff.” Images and sounds careen through my head. Rushing sky, tumbling rocks, a single scream. My breath quickens.
    “Uh, excuse me.”
    My eyes pop open.
    Macey points at the cupboard behind me. “I need salt.” She measures the salt and adds it to her bowl. “What does her death have to do with you?”
    “Kennedy’s death has nothing to do with me.” Blue and Green. We’re linked. Destined to share each other’s journeys. I start to pace around the tiny kitchen, my flip-flops slapping the bottoms of my feet.
    Macey takes a block of butter from a teeny-tiny fridge and slices and dices it into a million pieces.
    “Would you stop the Martha Stewart bit and read this?” I wave Kennedy’s bucket list in Macey’s face. “Is there anything on here that makes you think she was suicidal?”
    For the first time since we arrived in the FACS kitchen, Macey stills. She wipes her flour-dusted hands on the towel at her waist and takes the list, her pale, skeletal fingers careful, almost reverent.
    She studies the words. After a few minutes, she hands me the paper. “No.”
    A relieved breath whooshes from my chest. After reading the list, I didn’t sense any suicidal or even angsty vibe, but I’m no psychology expert. Macey’s second opinion reinforces my own that Kennedy’s death was not suicide, and therefore I can put the entire thing out of my mind. I waltz to the trash can at the end of the row of kitchens.
    “Stop!” An uncharacteristic pink flushes Macey’s normally ghost-y cheeks. “You’re not going to throw that away, are you?”
    “It’s a piece of paper.”
    Macey picks at a glob of buttery flour on the ragged cuff of her hoodie. “It seems weird to throw someone’s … uh … dreams and desires into the garbage.”
    “What am I supposed to do with it? Have some sacred sending-off ceremony? Frame it and give it to her next of kin? Kennedy is dead. Dead people don’t care about things left on Earth.” I hold my hand over the garbage, where inside something with a brown body, long antennas, and grotesquely jointed legs skitters.
    “Oh, no!” Macey cries.
    I spin toward Macey. She wrings her hands as she stands over her mixing bowl. “I added too much water.” She carries the bowl to the trash can, where she dumps the gray, gloppy mess onto the cockroach. A putrid odor, like sushi left in a locker over spring break, wafts from the garbage can. I turn away before I throw up, jamming the list into my pocket.
    Back in her kitchen, Macey pulls out a new bowl and the measuring cup. A non-Macey-like light flares in her eyes.
    “Exactly what are you doing?” I wonder how much stranger this day is going to get.
    “Making a strawberry pie.”
    I rub at my forehead, where I imagine a thousand tiny cockroach feet skittering and scampering.
    “Why, Macey, are you making a strawberry pie?”
    Her mouth turns down at the corners. “I couldn’t find any peaches.”
    I consider ditching my afternoon classes, but that would lead to another stint in detention, which would detonate Aunt Evelyn, so I wait until the final bell to head to the beach. On the half-mile walk to the Pacific Ocean, seagulls screech overhead, and cars full of hooting and screaming students rush by me, but not loud enough to drown out the voice in my head.
    I thought it would be kind of neat if we could be friends … Blue and Green … we’re linked …
    maybe we can go out for chai tea sometime and talk …
    Once at the beach, I kick off my flip-flops and dig my toes into the silky sand. Warmth creeps up my legs, across my chest, and along my neck, loosening the knots. I stroll along the water’s edge.
    Despite the craziness of the day, or perhaps because of it, I hunt for sea glass.
    Within minutes, I spy a clear wedge peeking from a crescent of gravelly sand. Clear glass is common, but I like the shape of this one. I slip the