Her name is Misery, and she does NOT want company.
***
It's not every day sixteen-year-old Misery Hayes finds a rock band full of pretty boys on her door step.
Actually, it's not every day Miser...
When I was six, I was jealous of this kid named Flynn because he knew how to skip rocks across Hampstead Lake and I didn't.
I spent most of that summer stalking him, watching him pick up flat stones before throwing back his arm and sending them skidding across the glassy surface.
I copied Flynn, and practiced all summer, but all my stones sank.
For a whole day, I'd been worried about what would happen when I finally bumped into Josh. For a whole day, stress and tension were at an all time high as I imagined every possible scenario.
Now that the anticipation was over, I felt kind of empty.
Now that I'd lost my momentum, I felt like all those rocks I'd sunk when I was six years old.
~~~
I turned the knob on my front door and stepped inside. I hadn't called Enid to come and get me, and Josh hadn't said anything else. He'd simply gotten up, opened the door, and exited the stairwell. His right elbow was bleeding, leaving small droplets of blood behind.
I don't remember how long I sat in that stairwell, but when I stood up to leave a sharp pain shot through my left ankle. I sat back down and sighed. Now, I actually had a legitimate reason to go to the nurse, but I still couldn't because I was also soaking wet, and that would invite questions I couldn't answer. So instead of going to the nurse's office or back to class, I limped home in the fading rain.
The first thing I did when I got inside was limp into the kitchen to get some ice for my ankle. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table in tweety bird scrubs eating yogurt. I stiffened, surprised to see her home again, but recovered quickly. If she didn't care that I was skipping school then why should I?
"Hey," I murmured, limping over to the refrigerator.
I could feel her eyes on my ankle as she murmured a greeting in return.
I opened the freezer, not surprised to find it still empty, and grabbed the ice tray. She wasn't going to ask why I was skipping school two days in a row. She wasn't going to ask about my ankle- and that was ok.
