Playing With Fire Read Online Free PDF

for someone more, well, grounded.
    Me: I’m grounded. Totally. I spent most of my teenage years grounded.
    Interviewer: Hmm.
    Me: That was a joke. Promise. My dad didn’t have the heart to ground me, even when I deserved it.
    Interviewer: We need someone levelheaded.
    Me: I can be levelheaded. One time I was shopping with my friend Sherridan, who will kill you if you call her Sherry, and she wanted to buy this very pretty, very expensive blue dress. Blue is totally her best color and it looked killer on her, but she’d already maxed out her cards and didn’t have excess cash. I told her the dress made her ass look fat so she wouldn’t put herself into more debt. A gal doesn’t get any more levelheaded than that.
    Interviewer: I’ll make a note of that. Meanwhile, it was nice to meet you. I’ll call you and let you know our decision.
    Me: When? I really need this job. Really, really badly.
    Interviewer: I’ll be making calls in a few days.
    Me: Okay, great. I’ll keep my ringer turned on so you can reach me anytime. Really. Anytime is good. Well, except for tomorrow morning. I’m not feeling so great. And maybe tomorrow night won’t be so good, either. And Saturday. But other than that I’m completely reachable.
    Interviewer: That’s…good to know. I’ll have security show you out.
    Y EAH , LIKE Mr. Donald MacRonald was ever going to call me.
    “Ouch, ouch, ouch.” Groaning, I clutched a pillow to my stomach. I’d never been this sick. Not even the time Bobby Lowenstein planted a big wet one on me in the ninth grade and I woke up the next morning with lymph nodes the size of baseballs. Mono had sucked ass.
    This sucked bigger ass.
    Maybe I’d call Sherridan and make her come over and take care of me. As it was, I didn’t have the strength to go into the kitchen and get myself a glass of water and eight hundred Tylenol.
    I whimpered as another wave of pain assaulted me. My blood heated to boiling, burning like lava in my veins before chilling to ice. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought something was alive inside me, clawing its way through my every cell. Slicing me apart and rearranging my organs.
    Forget Sherridan. I needed a doctor.
    I reached for the phone, but my arm dropped onto the bed, too heavy to hold up. A strange but welcome lethargy suddenly flowed through me, lulling me into darkness, away from the pain. My eyelids closed and a black web wove inside my mind. Morning. I’d feel better in the morning.

CHAPTER THREE
    B Y MORNING I WANTED to kill myself.
    How many hours I drifted in and out of consciousness, I didn’t know. One minute I saw sunshine streaming in through my windows, the next moonlight. One minute I shivered from cold, the next I sweated profusely. Awake I hurt. Asleep I hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt. Everywhere. I was dying. I knew I was. I, who had never fallen in love, never owned a cat—or anything but an obnoxious betta—and never really lived .
    This was it. The end. And it wasn’t pretty.
    You know how dying people claim to see a light at the end of the tunnel, or that their life flashes before their eyes? Lucky bastards! Why couldn’t I be one of them? Instead I heard Ron’s pervy voice tell me over and over that I was fired as I fell through a seemingly never-ending tunnel, the fires of hell licking at me on one side, snowballs slamming into me on the other.
    In this strange la-la land, I’d watched my nightstand catch fire, orange-gold flames flickering toward the ceiling. Then I’d watched a rain cloud form above it and douse the flames completely. The hallucination had been so real I’d heard the crackle of burning wood, the patter of the water and the ensuing sizzle of dying embers. I’d even smelled the ashes.
    Afterward, I’d spotted a dark angel/demon standing at the edge of my bed, watching me, waiting for me to die. His gaze had seemed to burn into me. Intense. Scorching. I had felt a strange sort of comfort in his presence, though, knowing I