Falling into Place by Amy Zhang Read Free Book Online

lifelong virgin, like, Let’s study this dude who was so obsessed with physics that he didn’t even want to have sex, isn’t he incredible? —and somewhere in the sudden flood of velocity and inertia and force, Liz had started falling behind.
    She just didn’t get physics. So there were all these theories and laws, and they’d spend weeks picking them apart, and in the end, Mr. Eliezer would tell them that they had to factor in air resistance and friction and all this other crap, so most of them couldn’t even be applied. It seemed sketchy to her, a science dependent upon the uncertainties of life.
    Still. It was nice, the idea that she would never have to stress about homework or grades or Newton the goddamn virgin ever again.
    But she turned onto the on ramp too sharply, and her backpack kept moving in one direction while the car turned in another. It thudded to the floor of the car, and Liz starting thinking about moving objects and Newton’s First Law.
    Objects at rest stay at rest, objects in motion stay in motion.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
One Day After Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car
    L iz has always hated missing school. She hates making up work and wondering what happened without her. Did people talk about her? Did they call her slut and skank and worse things while she was gone? She always talks about people behind their backs, so she assumes that everyone else does too. Liz has gone to school with hangovers and migraines, bruises and sprains, colds and stomach flus, and once with a sore throat that started an epidemic of strep throughout the entire district.
    But today, with a missing spleen and a broken leg and a shattered hand and a ruptured lung and too much internal bruising to document, it seems unlikely that Liz Emerson will attend school.
    Julia too stays at the hospital with what must be her tenth can of Red Bull wobbling in her hands. Monica is there, of course, and Liam, who hadn’t intended to stay at the hospital, is still asleep against the window.
    Everyone else is already at school. Within the walls of Meridian High School, there is a hush like smoke, like smog. Breathing it is like breathing January air—it stings with each inhale, freezes inside each lung. An hour away, Liz is dying in St. Bartholomew’s, but here, she is already dead. The rumors have made it very clear that there is little hope for Liz Emerson.
    The worst place is the cafeteria, where most of the school congregates before the bell rings, copying homework and gossiping. I get a glimpse as I walk by, a glimpse of the shock and tears, and it’s so strange, the silence, the sniffling.
    How Liz would have hated it.
    She would have known that most of them aren’t crying for her. They’re crying for themselves, for fear of death, for the loss of faith in their own invincibility, because if Liz Emerson is mortal, they all are.
    The teachers are having an emergency faculty meeting, where they receive hastily photocopied sheets of “Things to Say to Distraught Students.” The principal breaks down when she tells everyone that the only reason Liz is still alive is because a machine is moving her lungs.
    But I think at least a few of the teachers must be relieved, just a little, that Liz Emerson is no longer going to be attending their classes. Spanish, because Liz blatantly texted every single day and never participated in class. English, because Liz deliberately formed opinions directly opposite those of the teacher’s. Definitely study hall, because Liz Emerson’s very presence inspired everyone else to do stupid things.
    It isn’t that Liz minds authority, exactly. It’s just that she once liked being Liz Emerson and she liked showing it, and that meant challenging teachers and daring them to challenge her back. And it doesn’t matter that