Deadgirl by B.C. Johnson Read Free Book Online

stayed there for a long time, him holding me just above the ground, looking down at me.
    Then it wasn’t Zack anymore. Just a black shadow in the shape of Zack. The shape I loved so much. He let me down the last foot to the asphalt, slowly, gently, cradling my broken body draining rapidly of strength. When he set me down and stood up straight, I could barely even feel the jagged rock beneath me. I felt nothing, in fact.
    “Buh…”
    I couldn’t even form the word before the shadow winked out of existence.
    I had no more tears to cry, I realized. Nothing but the slow pulse of my blood leaking out onto a dirty parking space. Then I went cold. Then I died.
    Light. Welling. Heat.
    Fire.
    Hell?
    No .
    Warm.
    Content?
    Drained away.
    Drained away like a gas tank, like a pile of firewood.
    A hungry flame took everything in its greedy mouth and swallowed it whole.
    My eyes fluttered open again.
    “What?” I whispered.
    Overhead, the baleful yellow light glared down at me. I felt my fingers curl against the asphalt, raking my fingertips with jagged lines of pain. My butt felt flattened and sore—my spine felt like it had been stretched over a pile of broken glass. The back of my head, resting against the ground, felt raw and sensitive, and every tiny motion of my body sent an ache through my skull.
    Blue above me. Daytime blue . The golden light wasn’t the streetlight—it was too warm now, amber instead of perverse yellow. A cloud floated in the bright blue sky just above me, in the shape of a rabbit, or maybe one of those fat little pug dogs. I blinked. I raised my hands to rub my eyes against the glaring light.
    I sucked in a breath and touched my stomach. I sat up, ignoring a racking stiff pain in my back, and looked down.
    My shirt was still torn and stained with blood. I grabbed the edges of the hole and tore. The fabric ripped easily, revealing my bare stomach. Brown, dried blood flaked off of my stomach with the movement, but most of it clung tightly to my skin. I shuddered and probed at my abdomen with trembling fingers. I felt no sudden stab of pain, no aching sickness.
    I touched where the hole that took my life should be. Smooth skin, beneath the blood. No scar, no puckered skin, no gaping maw. Just nothing. Just me.
    Alive?
    My eyes began to adjust to the day, and I turned my head to either side of me. Just parking lot, the office building with its empty, dark windows. In the distance, over the hedges that lined the parking lot, I could see chunks of the Set’s landscape against the sky.
    I sat up, slowly at first, expecting some rush of agony or wave of dizziness, but I felt nothing. Nothing beyond the norm, anyway. I touched my stomach again, ran my fingers harder across the skin. Trying to find the pain. Some part of me wanted it to be there. Some sign, other than the blood, that it all wasn’t some dream.
    But I felt nothing, other than my fingers and the crusted blood and a nagging terror that I was about to wake up.
    I checked my pockets—I had my phone, my wallet, my keys. If I’d been robbed, someone had done a pretty crappy job. I turned my phone over and pressed the menu button. The screen didn’t light up. Dead. I made a sound in the back of my throat that I only just recognized as a stifled laugh.
    Without it, I didn’t even know the time. I stared up at the sky, trying to read it like I knew what I was doing. I guessed noon by the height of the sun, but I’d never even been a Brownie as a little girl. I liked camping and the outdoors, but a wild trailblazer I was not. I insisted on an inflatable mattress every time, in fact.
    I stood, again expecting the wash of dizziness. Nothing. As I cleared the hedges blocking my view, I could see the gigantic parking lot encircling the Set was only mildly full. Saturday morning wasn’t the busiest time—it certainly wasn’t the chaotic swarm of a Friday night.
    Something glittered on the asphalt when I moved my head. I looked down. A small revolver sat