If I Die Read Online Free Page B

hall and into my room, where I pulled my shirt over my head without remembering to close the door. They both followed, and when my dad realized I was changing, he stepped out of the doorway and shoved a very corporeal Tod farther down the hall.
    “Kaylee, say something,” he called, but I couldn’t. I barelyeven registered his voice. All I could hear was the raucous clamor of panic in my own head, insisting I do something—anything—to take my rapidly fracturing mind off the fact that I had less than a week to live.
    No senior year .
    I unbuttoned my uniform pants and let them pool around my ankles, then stepped into the pair of jeans draped over my bed.
    No graduation .
    I pulled open the second drawer of my dresser and pawed through the contents for my favorite blue ribbed T-shirt.
    No college .
    I pulled the shirt on and tugged my hair from the collar, then stepped into a pair of sneakers.
    No career. No family. No anything, beyond whatever catastrophe next Thursday had waiting for me.
    “Kaylee, where are you going?” my father demanded as I stomped past him and Tod on my way to the front door.
    “Out.” I turned to face them as I scooped my keys from the candy dish, and the panic clear in my father’s expression could have been a reflection of my own. “I’m sorry. I have to… I can’t think about this right now, or I’m going to lose my mind. And I don’t want to spend my last week on earth in a straitjacket. I’ll be back…later. Could you feed Styx for me, please?”
    Without waiting for an answer, I opened the front door and jogged out to my car. A moment later, I glanced up as I backed down the driveway to find them both standing on the front porch, staring after me.
     
    As it turns out, you can’t outrun death. No matter how fast you drive, you can’t even outrun thoughts of death, when you know it’s coming for you. Is this how Addy felt? Like shecouldn’t breathe without choking on the knowledge that she’d soon be breathing her last?
    I drove for nearly forty minutes, paying little attention to the direction, blasting music on the radio in an attempt to drown out my own thoughts. But none of it worked, and by the time I’d made my way back to familiar surroundings, I’d realized that the only way to get my mind off my own problems was to focus on someone else’s.
    When I glanced up, I realized the hospital was several blocks ahead, as if my subconscious had known where I was going the whole time.
    I found front-row parking in the visitors’ lot, which was nearly empty because visiting hours were over. The lady at the front desk gave me Danica Sussman’s room number, but warned me that I wouldn’t be able to see her this late. I thanked her and headed back toward the parking lot—then looped around to another entrance, where I took an elevator up to the third floor.
    There was only one person at the third floor nurse’s station, and it was easy to sneak past when she got up for coffee. Room 324 was around the corner and four doors down. I hesitated, loitering outside Danica’s door for a couple of minutes, trying to dial up my courage and think of an opening line that wouldn’t make me sound like a nosy gossip in search of tomorrow’s high school headline. But when shoes squeaked from around the corner, I hurriedly pulled the door open and stepped inside.
    After all, what was the worst that could happen? I’d babble like an idiot and get tossed out of her room? The embarrassment could only last six days, max, and after that, nothing would matter anyway.
    The hospital room smelled sterile and felt cold, and it was lit only by a horizontal strip of light over the head of the bed.Danica was asleep on her right side, facing me. She looked pale and small beneath the thin covers. Too young to have been a mother. Not that that mattered now.
    I watched her sleep for several minutes, thinking about how very different our lives must be. She’d obviously done at least one thing I