Page 59 of Haunt Me

“It was perfect,” I sigh against her skin, my breath caressing her cheek.Youare perfect, I want to say, but I can’t. It’s too much. Too soon. She is already shaking in my arms. She isstillshaking.

I am too. I’ll never stop.

“Eden,” I whisper, her name a broken prayer on my lips.

“I feel so much for you, I’m going to die,” she whispers into my mouth.

“You are not going to die. Not on my watch.”

“I could happily die after this.”

I could too, I think. After a kiss like this. I would happily die—except for one thing: I want to kiss her again.

“Stop talking about dying,” I say abruptly.

“But I know I will,” she says. “I am condemned.”

I fit my lips to hers, trying to steal these ugly words out of her mouth, but instead I taste tears on her skin. I freeze. She pulls away.

“I n-need to go,” she says, and her voice is trembling and hoarse, and instinctively, I get how much effort it took her to say those words.

So I let her go.

She turns around and runs, and as she disappears around a bend in the road, I hear a sob escape her. My heart shatters in pieces.

Back at school, I get caught trying to get in, and I get detention. There is a lot of yelling going on. I barely pay any attention to it. I don’t even care about all the other things I should have gotten in trouble for today—or whenever they eventually get discovered.

My mind can’t concentrate on the victory of surviving a busy high-speed highway. It is completely occupied with reliving that kiss.

Over and over and over again.

The principal is yelling, my therapist starts calling me nonstop, and a fist of fear clutches my heart at the memory of how Eden ran away from me.

But without even realizing it, I slip back into the memory of her kisses. I live there now. Nothing else matters, nothing else exists. In the middle of all the yelling and punishing that’s going on around me—to me—I smile.

Eden’s Old Phone (continued)

F: I’m here, Eden. I haven’t left. I just let you talk nonsense for a while. Did you get it out of your system?

Eden: I think of getting out of here.

F: You could go to college, be a writer. Isn’t that your dream?

Eden: Don’t be silly. People like me don’t get to ‘be’ anything.

F: People like you? What are you? Have you ever seen anyone like you?

Eden: I have literally seen no one, remember? But I have watched a few movies. And read a lot of books. I pretty much can read any book I want, and I haven’t met anyone like me in them either.

F: So what are you?

Eden: I am nothing. Worthless.

F: What makes you say that?

Eden: Father—Dad—told me. That I am a product of my mother, who was stupid and worthless, and I am too.

F: You know that’s probably a lie.

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