Survival (Twisted Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

in.
    February 7 th , 2003.
     
    It had been one month. One month that already felt like a lifetime of solitude. I ended up quitting both my jobs – there was no point in working when I had nothing to work for. I was ashamed, but I had given up. I ignored calls from my friends; they were no longer friends. How could I spend time with people when they pointlessly tried to make me feel better about something they didn’t understand? Oliver no longer had friends. The fighters at Geoff’s Gym sent me flowers every week with a note telling me they were thinking of me and I was welcome at any time. The flowers went straight in the bin; flowers die, just like my brother did. I stopped eating too. I didn’t have enough money to buy food since I quit work and the woman who gave birth to me didn’t buy any. She sat in her bedroom, only coming out to go and buy vodka and cigarettes. I never saw her. Dad disappeared again, much like he had when the ball got rolling, no doubt to seek comfort from his girlfriend. Beth called every day for the first week, offering to move in. I told her to move on, to stay where she was. She had to make something of herself and make Oliver proud.
    I continued to sit in my room and stare at everything Oliver and I had. None of it mattered anymore. I slept in his bed every night and told him I loved him before I closed my eyes and the nightmares took over. They were the only things that reminded me what was happening.  The images of my brother in his final hours would forever be etched into my mind and remind me that I had failed.
     
    Curtis became the only constant in my life. He found us a park not far from home and he took me there every day to look out at endless fields. Sometimes there were children in the playground and I imagined how Oliver would have been as a father. He would have been perfect. But mostly, the park was empty and we just sat in silence.
    It was a cold day. I sat on the picnic table wrapped up in my coat and the patchwork blanket Curtis put over me. He blew on his hands and shoved them in his coat pocket.
    “Here.”
    I slid closer to him and gave him half the blanket. He moved closer still, wrapped his arm around me and pulled the edges of the blanket together so it closed around us.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, so quietly his voice was almost lost to the raindrops that began to fall slowly to the grass. “I’m so sorry.”
    I shook my head.
    “Oliver wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me,” he continued.
    “That’s not true,” I let a few tears fall and watched as they got lost in the rain. “I guess everything that happened before led him to you. You couldn’t have stopped him.”
    “I could have tried.”
    “You didn’t know this would happen.”
    “But the fact that it could happen should have been enough.”
    “Stop,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder. “Oliver wouldn’t blame you.”
    “I blame me.”
    “I blame me, too. It doesn’t bring him back.”
    We sat in silence as the rain continued to fall. We didn’t care; we stayed in the same spot until darkness fell and we were soaked.
    “Can I take you somewhere?” Curtis asked as he helped me off the table.
    “Where?”
    He didn’t answer. He took my hand and led me to the car.
     
    I didn’t expect Geoff’s Gym to look like it did. I didn’t know what I expected; I never got the chance to see where Oliver spent his days. It was a small building in a car park, light and inviting. It wasn’t bathed in the darkness I expected when I thought about fighting.
    “Why are we here?” I asked as we climbed out of the car.
    “I live here,” Curtis pulled out a set of keys and opened the front door. “My parents deserted me too.”
    I hesitated on the threshold, but it was where Oliver had spent his time. It was the last connection I had to him. I stepped inside and Curtis locked the door behind us.
    The oxygen was squeezed from my lungs as I looked around. There was a ring in the