Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Cam. Please don’t cry.
    “Almost,” I
said, taking a deep breath and turning around. Liesel and I shared eye contact
for a few seconds. She knew what I still had to do.
    She reached her
hand out for mine and I embraced it, briefly. I entered the hallway and knocked
on Kimber’s door. I didn’t hear a response, but the light was on so I slowly
opened it.
    I looked in to
see her bed unmade, but Kimber nowhere to be found.
    “Cam?” Her voice
echoed down the hallway. I turned around to see her in the bathroom brushing
her teeth.
    I nodded and
smiled. “Oh, there you are.”
    “What is it?”
she asked nonchalantly, not having a clue that it was unlikely we would ever
see each other again. Liesel tried to infuse in me the positive thinking that
we’d be slaying the evil Hannah within a few days, with nobody in the world
having to suffer at all. But that seemed pretty far-fetched, especially since I
just discovered Liesel crying over a freaking photo. I could tell she knew the
odds of us winning this fight were slim to none. But I remained hopeful. If I
didn’t have hope, there’d be nothing left.
    “I just wanted
to say goodnight,” I said to Kimber as I reached the doorway.
    She finished
brushing her teeth and started wiping her mouth with a towel. “Well… that’s
kind of weird.”
    “And I wanted to
say how amazing you were in D.C. You ’ve really made me
a proud older brother.”
    She set her
hands on her hips and squinted her eyes at me. “OK, what’s really going on?”
    “Huh?”
    “You rarely go
out of your way to say goodnight to me, let alone complement me. What’s up? Please
don’t tell me you have another aging problem, Cam. You’ve gone forward and
backward. There’s nowhere else for you to go. Except…”
    “Sideways.”    
    “Sideways.
Exactly.” She paused, chuckled, and said, “What would sideways aging be?”
    “Maybe I could
jump back and forth. Like wake up seventy tomorrow, then twenty-two the next
day, then three the day after that, then 119 the day after that.”
    “You’d have some
aches and pains.”
    “It’d be
awkward,” I said.
    “It’d be Hell.
Hella funny, that is!”
    She started
laughing, and even though her little quip was pretty lame, I laughed along with
her. She looked so cute right now, smiling and guffawing in the bright bathroom
with the fierce overhead fluorescents shining down on her.
    “Anyway,” she
said, “was that all?”
    “That was all.”
    I knew it’d be
less suspicious to turn around and head back to my bedroom, but I couldn’t
resist. I took a step inside the bathroom and gave Kimber a big, unexpected
hug.
    Before I could
even recognize my sadness, a tear rolled down my cheek.
    “Cam?” she
asked.
    I took a step
back and wiped my eyes. “Goodnight, Kimber.”
    “ Cam .” There was no smiley face, no
chuckling now. She stared at me with an ultra-serious look, like she wanted to
viciously attack me. “What the hell is going on?”
    I didn’t tell
her what was going on. I couldn’t. I said, “Whatever happens, just know, I
won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
    “Is everything
all right?”
    I nodded and
stepped out of the bathroom. “Goodnight. I love you.”
    I headed back
toward my bedroom when I heard Kimber say, faintly, “I love you, too.”
    My hug for
Kimber might have been a surprise, but her hug from behind surprised me most of
all. She wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her head against my back.
I knew she knew something big was coming.  
    I turned around
and tried to force a smile. “Take care of Mom and Dad for me,” I whispered.
    She nodded. “I
will.”
    “I’ll be back as
soon as I can. And Kimber…”
    She took a deep
breath and smacked her chapped lips together. “What?”
    “You have to
trust me, OK? Please trust me.”
    “I will, Cam.”
    When she took a
step back, I turned to my left to see Liesel standing in my bedroom doorway.
She and Kimber locked eyes for a moment,