AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And I wouldn’t.
My poor heart couldn’t handle the shitstorm I imagined going on there.
The fact that I’d spent years building everything up and then—
Yeah.
And then.
This.
The heavy weight of last night, and this morning, finally felt so crushing that I could barely hold myself upright anymore. I dropped my backpack on the counter—Mom would flip if she saw that, and I shuffled into the living room.
My favorite couch was calling me.
I fell onto it and pulled one of the throw pillows under my head. The blanket my grandma made still laid on the back of the couch. I yanked it down and over my body.
Approximately ten seconds later, I was fast asleep.
23
Jillian
That noise.
It was familiar.
But I hadn’t heard it in a long, long time.
What was it?
Some kind of bell?
So weird.
I knew what it was.
But I didn’t.
It stopped.
I sighed and felt myself drifting off to sleep.
And then the stupid bell started again. “What the heck is that?” My eyes opened. Or more like they tried to open. My eyelids were heavy and clamped together like opposite ends of a magnet.
I sat up and blinked away my sleep.
Home.
I was at home.
And that stupid noise was the phone.
The ancient, corded house phone that my mom always insisted we keep. No matter how many times I’d told her those phones went out with dinosaurs.
She’d always come back with, “If there’s a power outage, what are you going to do? Huh? Smartiepants.” And then I’d laugh and roll my eyes at her.
But that was my mom.
