What We Leave Behind Read Online Free PDF Page A

mean, you’re not dead. You’re just in the hospital.”
    “I thought you were one of those beautiful little angels.”
    “Angel?” I responded with a laugh. “Hardly.”
    “Then what happened to Jonas?”
    “Jonas? You mean your son?”
    He nodded.
    “Well, I think he doesn’t take to hospitals very well.”
    “Like his father.”
    I figured some manners would suit me right about now. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, sir. I don’t really know why I came in here. Your son, I mean, Jonas, was out there talking with me, and I, I was just curious.”
    “Jessica Parker, can you get me some water, please?”
    “Sure,” I said, a little too excitedly. I took the pitcher from the tray beside him, filled one of the empty plastic cups, and handed it to him, but he didn’t move.
    “You’ll have to help me.”
    I looked around, hoping he was talking to someone else in the room. When I saw that he wasn’t, I shrugged a little, remembering yarmulke boy from school who was always talking about doing mitzvahs.  I decided this was a mitzvah and helped a dying man drink a glass of water.
    I held the cup up to his lips as he took a few sips. We were in close proximity to one another.
    “Are you sure you’re not an angel?” he asked.
    I laughed. Then a thought crossed my mind. Maybe it was the drugs; he was a little loopy and out of sorts.
    The laughter caused the cup I was holding to spill water down the front of his gown.
    “I’m so sorry, sir, really,” I said. “Here, I’ll get a towel.”
    This was all too much for me. All this touching and being close to an older man who wasn’t my father, or even an uncle or big brother, was weird, weird, weird. Maybe he was a pedophile, I thought, but that didn’t even make me want to laugh. I knew that was impossible. I was torn. My body told me to walk out of the room, but my head told me to stay put. The inner battle didn’t last long.
    I said, “You have the same birthday as I do.”
    “Is that so?”
    “Maybe it’s some destiny, fate thing,” I added.
    “Serendipitous?”
    “Yes, serendipitous.”
    “How old are you?” he asked. I wasn’t sure if this was his way of implying I had childish notions or if it was something he wanted to know.
    “Fifteen. Actually, I already feel sixteen. I’ve been practicing it for months.”
    “You have? You must be very good at it by now.”
    “Your son doesn’t seem to agree.”
    “What does he know?” he laughed, while I shrugged my shoulders. “I remember fifteen,” he said.
    “You do?”
    “Yes, I do, Jessie.” I decided it was fine for him to call me Jessie.
    “Fifteen was a good year,” he continued, as I watched him speak, traveling back through his memories. “I shared my first real kiss with Rachel Kaplan.”
    “Who was she?”
    “Only the most beautiful girl in the eleventh grade. I thought about her every day and every night, and the more I thought about her, the meaner I’d be to her.”
    “How’d you end up kissing her?” Spoken by a true novice, one that personified sweet sixteen and never been kissed .
    “We took turns torturing each other for awhile and then we became really good friends. We were invited to all these, what do you call them, those boy-girl mixers.”
    “Kissing parties?” I interrupted.
    “Yes, kissing parties, and we realized we were both pretty apprehensive about kissing for the first time, so we decided to help each other, be each other’s first kiss, to practice, so to speak.”
    I visualized their practice session, wondering if there were any boys at Tremont I could bully into being my test model.
    “Then it was all over for me. I was smitten . That kiss changed everything . When I next saw her, gone was the girl who tutored me in math. She was a woman now, and growing more beautiful with each passing day. I was the one being tortured, all nervous and tongue-tied around her, something I’d never experienced before. When I finally had the nerve to invite her to