Nearly Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

step, was a small cardboard box. I picked it up, expecting it to be empty, but something shifted inside. It had been loosely taped shut, and a soft scratching sound rasped against the inner walls of the box when I shook it. I held it under the dim porch light, a strange feeling twisting in my gut.
FOR NEARLY, it said in bold blue letters that felt oddly familiar.
I glanced over my shoulder. No one was there except Lonny and Oleksa, still deep in hushed conversation. Pulling at a loose corner of tape, I slowly opened the top.
I dropped the box and clapped a hand over my mouth. The small mound of rotting flesh was stiff with rigor mortis. Her white throat was crusted with blood.
A dead cat.
The words DEAD OR ALIVE were written in blood inside the lid. The letters had dried and crackled like finger paint, but the blocky handwriting was the same as the blue letters on my lab table.
I’d seen the feral calico coming and going from a hole under Mrs. Moates’s trailer. I looked down the street at her window but her lights were already off and I didn’t see any sense in waking her. The poor thing had probably been a stray anyway.
I held my breath and used the box to scoop up the tiny body, dropping her inside the closest trash can and lowering the lid. I breathed through my sleeve and backed away, eyes blurring and throat working from the smell, and stumbled over the other can. The lid crashed to the pavement and wobbled, reverberating through the alley. Oleksa and Lonny stared with narrow eyes. My neighbor peeled back her curtain again when her security light flashed on, her dog barking and scratching through the window. I untangled myself and raced up my front steps, throwing the dead bolt behind me.
Reaching for the metal bat my mother kept propped behind our front door, I slid to the floor, crouching in the dark until the Mercedes’s lights passed over the frayed sofa and peeling walls, tossing the room in one quick pass, then dropping it into darkness. I listened for feet on gravel or a rustle against the window. It was silent except for the cars on Route 1.
Leaving the lights off, I crawled into bed with my clothes on and pulled the blankets to my chin. I lay there, unable to get the smell out of my head. Unable to shake the image of the letters written in blood.
I reached down between the mattress and the box spring for my father’s wedding band, one ear alert for Mona coming home. But I knew I wouldn’t tell her about the cat. I couldn’t let some jerk from school freak her out enough to miss her weekend shifts just to stay home with me. We couldn’t afford it. Besides, it didn’t matter what Schrödinger thought. I’d opened the box and the cat was dead, and there was nothing Mona or I could do for it now.

5
    I stood on my toes in the crowd clustered by the chem lab. Lab grades were posted next to the door every Monday morning, so we’d all know exactly where we stood. Like I needed any reminders.
    There I was.
Boswell, Nearly.
Second place below Bui, Anh Thi. On paper, it was only
    a few millimeters of space—one half of a percent between friends—but in my mind those millimeters were miles. I had about five weeks left to narrow that gap, or I’d have to shake Anh’s hand and congratulate her on walking away with my ticket out of Sunny View.
    Hugging textbooks to my chest, I pushed through the pack of hopefuls, trying not to touch any of them skin to skin. I’d almost made it out of the herd when I tripped over someone’s shoe and went sprawling across the hall, colliding into something hard. My books scattered over the floor and a tall guy with messy dark hair and multiple piercings in his eyebrow glared down at me, obviously offended. His cold blue eyes were ringed with shadows, like he hadn’t slept well in a long, long time and he was looking for someone to blame.
    I backed out of his way as he bent to pick something off the floor. He came up holding a black motorcycle helmet, turning it over in his