Premeditated Read Online Free PDF

like it.”
    As much as people didn’t fit with me, they would have clicked with Claire in an instant. She would have had thirty new numbers in her contact list by the end of the day, easy.
    My thoughts turned sour, picking up the thread of all the things Claire should have been doing besides lying in a hospital bed, and I became acutely aware of the fact that I was wearing her clothes. Her itchy skirt and the stabby headband she would have found a way to love, and her white knee socks picking up grass stains. It should have been her sitting there on the ground,chatting with a guy who wasn’t Brooks Walden and wouldn’t send her into a tailspin because he got bored. She should have been the one getting guided tours and flirting in Eleanor Lowry’s family cemetery, not me.
    When Mr. Tripp finally won his battle against the whiteboard and started class, I tried to pay attention, but it was no use. It didn’t even matter that the lesson was a darkly ironic reading of
Alice Through the Looking-Glass
. I couldn’t get my thoughts to settle down; it took all my energy and concentration not to start crying right there in front of everyone. That would have meant looks and whispers and questions I didn’t want to answer.
    If Dex spoke again, I didn’t hear him. He was a distraction, and I’d let him knock me off my goal too easily. I’d offered up too much information. The more specifics people knew about Claire, or me, the more likely it was that Brooks would figure out that my presence had something to do with her. I’d almost said as much to Dex. He was too easy to open up to, and I wasn’t familiar enough with the phenomenon to know how to counter it.
    So I went on autopilot. I set my inner alarm to ignore and coasted through class; then I drifted to gym, following Dex as he once again appointed himself my escort. I changed my clothes and lined up obediently with the rest of the girls the way Coach Blackwell told us to. I played basketball. I shot. I ran. I even scored six points.
    All while wearing a burgundy T-shirt with “C. Reed” stenciled on the back.
    As my body was guarding a girl named Brooke (who should be happy I didn’t hit her in the face with a ball for that factalone), my mind was back on point. I had a purpose for being at Lowry. One that didn’t involve things like trying to make friends or flirting for the fun of it when someone else started the game. Forget the fact that under normal circumstances, Dex was a guy I might have actually liked to talk to, or that his personality reminded me of friends I already had. I was there for Claire, not me. And by the time I was finished, things like friends and chitchat wouldn’t matter anymore.

6
    Dex was a traitor.
    Worse—he was a minion. I’d spent the better part of my morning being grilled by the devil’s right-hand demon and hadn’t even realized how dangerous he was. After he took me to the door of my history class (which was next to his), he spent the last five minutes of the passing period cutting up with Brooks and trying to get me to participate.
    “I found a stray puppy and brought her in out of the rain,” he said.
    “It’s not raining, idiot,” Channing spat. She stood leaning close to Brooks in what I assumed was a move to mark her territory. I should have known the leech would be attached to the beauty queen.
    “Hi,” Brooks said with the sort of smile I’d have thought charming if I hadn’t known better.
    “Hi,” I said back.
    A one-syllable test word to prove to myself I could speak to him without any sort of crackle or rise in my voice. Thankfully, his fingers were once again occupied with his pen, so he couldn’t shake hands or anything else that required skin contact. Speaking, I could force myself to handle. Touching, not so much.
    “What’s that?” I angled for a better look at the paper he was holding on top of his book.
    “Nothing, really. Just something to fill the time when Greystone wasn’t