HOW I LOST YOU

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Author’s Note: Thanks for reading! Please vote, comment and like! This is my most recent YA contemporary novels – if you like this please check out my other books I’m Not Her, If I Tell and Who I Kissed. Watch for 16 Things I Thought Were True coming in March 2014. My fave book yet!

Copyright © 2013 by Janet Gurtler

Chapter Thirteen

The front door of Kya’s house was unlocked. “Hello?” I called into the foyer, but no one answered. The clock in the front hallway ticked ominously.

I closed the front door behind me, slid off my flip-flops, and hurried down the hall. I knew the layout of her house as well as my own. I ran to the kitchen but she wasn’t in there. “Kya?” I called.

Spotting a large piece of white paper stuck on the fridge under a cowboy hat magnet, I moved closer. A messy handwritten note was scrawled on the paper.

Dad and I have gone to Patty’s. Home later.

The note burst with emotion and love. Not. Sighing, I went to the living room but she wasn’t there so I dashed two by two up the stairs and hurried down the hallway to her room.

I knocked but there was no answer, so I pushed open the door. Instead of crazy chaos like mine, her room was pretty much spotless and it always kind of freaked me out. No paintball posters or notes taped to her walls. No clothes spilling out of the laundry basket. Her dresser was neat with only a couple of framed, black and white photos. The floor was spotless. In the middle of the room, Kya curled up on her king-sized bed in a fetal position. She lay perfectly still on top of her comforter. A tiny kid on a giant bed.

“Kya?” I hurried toward her, but she didn’t respond. “Kya?” I reached over, grabbed her shoulder, and shook. She’d tucked her whole body into an unmovable ball, and her eyes were squeezed shut.

My heartbeat raced as I shook her again. “Kya?” She didn’t move. “Kya. Did you take something?” I yelped, remembering the boy in tenth grade who swallowed a bottle of pills before Christmas. We’d heard he had his stomach pumped in emergency and then was shipped to a psychiatric hospital. We’d never seen him again.

“Kya!” I glanced around for her phone. I hadn’t even brought mine.

Something puffed out of her mouth. Part laugh, part cry. “No,” she mumbled. “Don’t worry, I’m not brave enough to do that.”

“That would not be brave.” I sat on the bed and put my hand on her curled-up hip. “Don’t even say that. Oh, sweetie. What’s wrong?” I said. “What happened?”

“You mean other than blacking out last night?” She squeezed her eyes tighter.

I scooted closer and reached to smooth her hair, but she turned away and curled up into a tighter ball.

“I hate her. For calling me.” Her voice stayed flat. Angry and hollow. “She’s brought all this stuff back.”