Where We Fell Read Online Free PDF Page A

an idiot and I’m a stupid girl. Had I not found out about it, then I
probably would have stayed closer to him and then I never would have met you.”
She stops and glances up at me again with a wry smile. “And then I would have
missed out on all of this fun .”
    I shift on the bed and she moves away from my legs
to lie down next to me, face to face on my pillow. We don’t touch; we just look
at one another.
    “Rebecca. She was my one and only girlfriend. Junior
year.”
    “First and only real girlfriend,” she muses. “Did
you love her?”
    I ponder this and the answer becomes apparent. “No.”
    Hannah smiles and closes her eyes. Her head shakes
back and forth on my pillow and I think I like the way she smells more than
anything else in the entire world.
    “You’re such a boy.”
    “I am. And she was a girl . . .
Actually, she was one of Kayleigh’s best friends.” It suddenly dawns on me that
this might be the reason for the animosity between the girls.
    “Oh my God, Bishop.” She puts her fingers together
like she’s about to say ‘here’s the church and here’s the steeple’ while making
an over-exaggerated face of shock. “Puzzle pieces. Coming together, No wonder
that girl hates me.” She laughs again and closes her eyes, shaking her head at
her newfound knowledge.
    I close my eyes, too, and imagine what life would
have been like if I’d never met Hannah. If I’d never fallen on that track
during practice. If I’d kept seeing Rebecca and just gone about my life like
everything was simply ‘fine.’ If cancer had never happened.
    Then I open my eyes and stare at her with hers
closed, noting that this was definitely the better of two roads, even with a
diagnosis.
    ***
    My hair begins to fall out right before my birthday.
    It’s not the present I was hoping for.
    I’m brushing my teeth and raise my unoccupied hand
to shift the hair out of my eyes when the first clump falls out.
    It’s surreal, looking at the strands sitting there
between my fingers, like I’d just used a trimmer to get rid of it.
    My first reaction is to call Hannah. I tell her in a
hoarse and constricted voice that I need her; I know that she senses my urgency
because she hangs up before she can say goodbye. And by the time she makes it
to my house, I’m crumpled against the wall in my bedroom, my belongings
scattered everywhere because I lost my damn mind and just started breaking
shit. I’ve cleared the top of my dresser and strewn books all over the floor.
And my face is soaking wet from my tears.
    Everything aches, and I try my hardest not to touch
my head because I’m more afraid of pulling my hair out than I am of it coming
on its own. I’ve got my face buried in my knees and I’m wailing, which scares
the shit out of my mom, but I tell her to please go away. I need her to give me
space. I need the minutes before Hannah arrives to come to terms with the fact
that this is all real and not just something I made up.
    Hannah clears the room in record time, and I can
hear her speaking to me in gentle reassuring tones as she caresses each elbow.
My arms are squeezing my knees to my chest in an attempt to not completely fall
apart. But it’s not helping. She wraps her arms around my legs, too, and rocks
with me while I cry. And when I’m no longer making the god awful noises that
she walked in on, she works her hands between my arms and opens me up so that I
embrace her instead.
    “It’s okay,” she whispers.
    “It’s not.”
    “You’re getting better.”
    “I’m not. What if I’m not?”
    Hannah slips her hand up my neck and presses her
palm to my scalp. I flinch but she holds me tighter.
    Clad only in pajama pants, I can feel her against my
tear soaked skin, warm and soft, consoling me, and I start to cry even harder.
She shouldn’t have to see me like this but I need her.
    “Shh,” she coaxes me and runs her hand across my
head. “My mom said this was the hardest part. The ‘physical manifestation