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Back Undone Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. undone
  3. Dedication
  4. one
  5. two
  6. three
  7. four
  8. five
  9. six
  10. seven
  11. eight
  12. nine
  13. ten
  14. eleven
  15. twelve
  16. thirteen
  17. fourteen
  18. fifteen
  19. sixteen
  20. seventeen
  21. eighteen
  22. nineteen
  23. twenty
  24. twenty-one
  25. twenty-two
  26. twenty-three
  27. twenty-four
  28. twenty-five
  29. twenty-six
  30. twenty-seven
  31. twenty-eight
  32. twenty-nine
  33. thirty
  34. Acknowledgments

My heart didn’t stop racing until I saw the dam. I glanced around. It took thirty minutes before I was convinced the cops hadn’t followed me and that I was alone. I pulled the bag out. I worked at rolling the joint—my experience limited to halfheartedly watching Kori. Satisfied that it looked okay, I lit it and attempted to pull its entire essence into me in one long drag. Time for my soul to leave, I thought before I exhaled. But instead of a nice smooth stream of soul, I started coughing and didn’t stop until I’d coughed up what felt like half my lung. How did Kori ever look cool doing this?

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I inadvertently said out loud.

The sun’s colors began to blur. Orange. Red. Blue.

I thought about Parker. I imagined him lying in his hospital bed, waiting for all those test results to come back, waiting for answers from his doctors. And that was exactly how I felt. Paralyzed. Waiting. The life I used to have was gone. The future didn’t even have a name and I wondered if it was even worth the effort to wait until it did.

And like a gentle breeze, I heard her whisper curling through my thoughts. “I’m just waiting for you, kitten.”

I figured I was gone enough not to think too hard about what I was doing, and stoned enough not to feel too much pain. I stood up on the dam.

Looking down at the skinny path of the retaining wall, I readied myself. Hand, hand, foot, foot. My stomach quivered, refusing to settle. I swallowed, looked down at the cement, then at the broken boulders. No, I told myself, don’t look down. Look at the water.

But looking at the water made me dizzy. I closed my eyes and instead of seeing the rock screaming closer, this time I saw a car coming toward me. My hands jerked to cover my eyes. Bang! The world shattered into red. Just as I’d imagined Kori must have.

As I opened my eyes, I was staring at my hands. And as I peeled them from my face, I saw Anthony’s watch. It may not have been a good reason, but it was a reason. It was hard to remember the way I’d felt when he’d put it on me. So excited for a future with him. For a future, period. I squatted down, feeling for the ledge, hugging it as I lowered my shaking legs to the ground, out of danger.

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