The Almost Girl – ebook edition Read Online Free PDF Page B

fainted.” I eye the wires and she smiles again. “They’re just monitoring your heart rate. I took a look at your foot, and it’s healing quickly, faster than I expected.”
    “I can’t be here,” I choke out as June uncaps a syringe and deftly injects it into my arm. “What’s that? I don’t want any drugs!”
    “It’s just a sedative. Riven–”
    “No! You don’t understand. I need to leave. They’ll find me. They’ll find all of you.” My heart rate escalates with every breath, and concern crosses June’s face.
    “Calm down. You’re not making any sense. Who’ll find you? Your parents? Well, that’s good. I meant to ask you. For some reason, none of the numbers listed on your file at school seem to work. We need to get in contact with them and let them know you’ve been admitted to the clinic.”
    “My dad is out of town.” It’s a programmed response.
    “Cell phone?”
    “No. He calls me, remember?” My mind is racing trying to assess the situation. Somehow, my body is failing. I know that something isn’t right – I can feel it inside of me, the holes, and I clutch my chest. I need to get out of there. “June, hospitals… I can’t be here.” I’m gasping for air with each word. “Please. My mother… she died in a room just like this one… please!”
    I am not even pretending at this point. White spots are exploding like clouds of mist behind my eyelids. All I can see are the memories I do have of my mother tied down in a white room with tubes embedded in every part of her, screaming her head off.
    Waiting to die.
    It’s all I can do not to rip out the ones attached to me, and then tears are running down my face, and I can’t stop them, there’s so much pain like everything is dying inside of me. Where did it all come from? What’s happening? What is wrong with me?
    And then I am screaming, staring at the red dot on my arm. “What did you do? What did you do to me? What kind of poison did you put in me? Get it out, get it out!”
    “Help me restrain her arms,” I hear June say. “Gentle with her.”
    I fight like I have never fought before, as if I am fighting to keep my very last breath, scratching and scraping, kicking and punching. The full weight of a body collapses against me, and my arms thud, pinned to my sides against the bed. I am drowning in a sea of my tears, the salt of them covering my cheeks and my lips. My body stills and the world grows unnaturally quiet. Now I’m the one waiting to die.
    In my mind, I see the Vectors. They’re coming.
    “Please,” I whisper. “Please, June. Don’t let me die here.”
    “Don’t worry, darling. You’re safe now.”
    Something cool swirls around my veins, and then the world goes dark once more.
     
    Voices and colors fade in and out.
    “Is she going to be OK?” That one I recognize. It’s Caden’s. I want to tell him that I’m fine, but my lips won’t cooperate. My bones feel like syrup, like there’s nothing inside of the skin that’s holding my body together. Darkness takes me again.
    “… no consent for testing… can’t draw blood…”
    “… levels stabilized…”
    “… take her home… haven’t been able to locate her father…” That last one is June’s lilting voice.
    I sleep again.
    Images move along in an endless collage, bits of white and gray intermingling. Later on, there are bits of sky and swatches of green. The sound disappears. There’s only the quiet of gentle voices murmuring around me, like the sound of rain.
    My mind is quieter now, no longer so manic, allowing me to think and feel and process. A soft voice tells me that everything is going to be OK. Is it June or is it Caden? But I listen, and once more feel that sense of safety, of trust. And again, I know that I am breaking one of my own hard and fast rules.
    Never trust anyone. Especially the Otherworlders .
    But do I really have a choice? Other than Caden and June, I’ve thought of them as nothing but a means to an end.