Stealing Snow Read Online Free PDF Page A

ward if you had actually …” He trailed off, which was unlike him.
    Killed Magpie , I thought. That’s what he was going to say.
    “There isn’t anything beyond Ward D,” I reminded him. What more could they do to me?
    “If something had actually happened tonight, the state would have taken you away from me … away from Whittaker. Criminal charges would have been pressed. Do you understand?”
    I nodded.
    “Don’t worry, Snow. We will keep you here, where you belong.” He almost looked sincere. “I’m going to start you on a new protocol tomorrow.”
    I gritted my teeth. Another cocktail.
    He walked farther into the room, holding out a white cup to me. I hadn’t even seen it in his hand. “In the meantime, you need rest. Good rest.”
    I noticed two White Coats just outside the door, watching, waiting. Just in case things got out of hand. I guess Dr. Harris was more worried about what I did to Magpie than I thought.
    “Go on,” he said, rattling the pill inside the cup.
    I snatched it from his hand and looked inside. The little blue-and-yellow powdered pill I called Sleepy stared up at me. Just looking at it drained all the anger right out of me. And I kind of wanted that pill. I really was tired.
    “Thatta girl,” said Dr. Harris as I swallowed it down and lay back on my pillow. I was already starting to fade out by the time he closed my door. But before I fell asleep, I couldn’t help but hear Dr. Harris’s voice resonating through my brain. We will keep you here, where you belong.
    He was wrong. Whittaker wasn’t my home. No one deserved to be locked up forever. What was the point of life, then? Didn’t he want me to get better?
    I didn’t know where I belonged, but it wasn’t there.

    Later, the door to my room opened in the middle of the night, pulling me out of a deep sleep. At first I thought it was Vern doing spot checks. It wasn’t. Even through the cloudy, drug-induced haze I could see the boy standing by my bed. He had light-brown hair that fell partly over his eyes and dusted hisshoulders, curling slightly at the edges. His features were soft, light eyebrows, small nose, full lips. But I could see a sharp jawline as his face jutted out into a moonbeam that had fallen like a spotlight. His eyes glowed a silvery gray in the near dark.
    “You’re awake,” he said. I noticed then he was wearing an orderly’s white coat that looked a size too big for him. We made eye contact. “It’s really you.”
    Though I felt my heartbeat pick up, my body still felt heavy and sluggish. I didn’t move. There were a million things wrong with the fact that someone other than Vern was in my room at night. First and foremost, he was not an adult; he was a boy. He looked near my age, give or take a few months. Plus, White Coat night checks were strictly matched by gender to cut down on the chance for impropriety. Some inmates didn’t have boundaries in that department.
    Some White Coats didn’t, either.
    I watched the boy take a step closer. The hairs on my arms stood up, and everything in my body told me to be on guard. There was something about him, something more about him that demanded attention—period. He looked like he had stepped out of The End of Almost . How was it possible that someone who looked like this was in my room? This boy was almost aerodynamic, like a shiny sports car. Even wearing that oversize white coat, I could tell that there was no amount of flesh or muscle misused. He was just as thin as Bale, who had grown out of the skeleton boy he was as a child into something else entirely. But Bale’s lines were softer because he was locked in his room most of the time.
    I looked down and caught a peek at the boy’s shoes. They were shiny and black, the kind you wear for an interview or to a party or a wedding—not to a crazy girl’s room in the middle of the night.
    I finally pushed myself up in bed.
    “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said in a whisper. “When I got a signal