Until It Hurts to Stop Read Online Free Page A

get such joy from helping Raleigh tear me apart, how she could’ve liked the taste of that poison in her mouth.
And I can’t help wondering if she and Raleigh are already plotting against me, starting up a new wave of anti-Maggie operations. Maybe they’ve just been waiting for Raleigh to get over her jet lag and gather her army of haters.
When Adriana looks up at me, I turn back to the frog, steadying my hands on the pins and scalpel. Concentrate, I tell myself. This is your job .
Maggie Camden, Amphibian Coroner. Sounds like a TV show nobody would ever watch. But I get through the rest of the lab.
    Friday night marks my survival of another week of school. I sleep over at Nick’s so we can get an early start for Eagle Mountain the next morning. Nick’s mom is in bed when I get there, but Perry is watching a martial-arts movie and flipping through atlases.
    Perry loves maps—not antique maps, but maps from fifty or sixty years ago, including road maps. He buys tons of them at yard sales. He frames his favorites and hangs them on the walls, even though Phoebe isn’t crazy about them. “Not another one, Perry,” she’ll groan. But I’m so used to them that an aerial view of Yellowstone Park will forever remind me of their living room, and an old road map of Nevada means we’re in the upstairs hall. Perry gave Nick the topographic map of Crystal Mountain that hangs on his bedroom wall next to the photograph of its summit.
    “Eagle’s a good hike. I envy you,” Perry tells us now, taking his booted feet off the coffee table. One thing I love about Nick’s house is that you can put your feet up on the furniture whenever you want. Unlike at my house, where wood finish is practically sacred. This is one of Dad’s few annoying quirks— because he loves working with wood, he can’t bear to see it treated casually. We spend half our lives hunting down coasters to put under our drinks.
    “Yeah, I can’t wait to get up there,” Nick says.
“Me neither.” I want to get out into the woods, to wash the staleness of school halls out of my lungs, to take a full breath without worrying about Raleigh around the next corner.
Perry clicks off his movie. “One thing, Nick. Your dad called. He said he couldn’t get through on your phone.”
“What did he want?”
“He didn’t say. Just that he’ll try to reach you again.” Perry appears to be on the verge of saying more. This happens a lot when he talks about Nick’s dad. Like he has to stop himself from whatever he really wants to say. In the four years he’s been married to Phoebe, I’ve never heard him say anything bad about Nick’s father, but he does seem to swallow a lot of words unsaid.
Nick gives a sour laugh. “Must’ve been real important.” Nick and I hang out in the living room for a while, going over the description of Eagle and planning what to bring for lunch. We bend over the trail map, our knees and arms brushing, our faces barely an inch apart. I’m hyperaware of the mixed soapand-sweat scent of his skin, of my hair brushing his cheek, of his leg against mine. I follow his finger along a mountain ridge with my eyes, wondering what would happen if I acted on this heat. It’s hard for me to imagine it working smoothly, the two of us sliding into each other’s arms like some movie couple. The way we’re sitting, we’d probably bump elbows, get tangled up in the map. And then there are our legs: What would we do with them?
For all I know, kissing Nick might be just as disappointing as kissing Carl Gurney. I’m not sure how much experience Nick has. Over the summer, he went out once or twice with a girl from the garden center where he worked. And last year, Luis teased him about some girl he met at a party thrown by one of the basketball players. But he’s never had a real girlfriend, never spent much time with any girl but me.
Does that mean there’s potential? Or does it mean I’ll always be just a friend, part of the scenery, no more