Kiss of Death by Lauren Henderson Read Free Book Online Page A

fallen—
    “Taylor?” I call, but she must have gone ahead without realizing that I wasn’t hard on her heels.
    I’m alone in the smoke.
    It’s a lightning-fast decision. I can’t leave someone behind. Not when I’m the only person who knows there’s a girl back there.
    I turn and go as quickly as I can back down the corridor, yelling:
    “Who’s there? It’s Scarlett! Are you okay?”
    “Scarlett!” the voice comes, fainter now, as if she’s being overwhelmed by the smoke. “On the stairs—”
    Alison? Luce? I practically sprint for the fire door, dragging it open, choking as a fresh wave of smoke hits me. Doubling over, I’m overcome by long, racking coughs, and too late I think: Wet hand towels—you’re supposed to get something wet and put it over your mouth—I could have grabbed some and put them under the tap in our sink—ugh, why is it that you always forget what to do in an emergency, even though you’ve seen it in the films a hundred times —
    And just as I’m standing up again, drawing breath to yell once more for the girl who’s been calling me for help, I feel two hands in the small of my back, and the next second they give me an enormous push that sends me hurtling forward.
    It’s such a shock that I can’t get my footing. I’m catapulted ahead, tumbling over my feet, and another blow hits me, this time on the front of my body, a shockingly painful thwack across my hipbones. I double over again, but the momentum of that shove in the back means I’m still shooting forward.
    The stairs! I think frantically, realizing what’s happening much too late. I slammed into the railing with my hips and when I doubled up, I went flying over it!
    I’ll never know whether the person who pushed me came up behind me and gave me a final tip over the rail. I think they did. I couldn’t possibly—even with the speed at which I was moving—have hit that balustrade fast enough for the impact to spin me and send me somersaulting over it into space.
    Which is what happened. One moment I’m stumbling forward, in total shock at having been pushed so savagely; the next, I’m flying through the air headfirst, down a stairwell three stories high, with so much smoke in my lungs that I can’t even scream.

four
THERE’S ALWAYS A PLAN B
    I’m spinning through the air, so dazed and stunned by what just happened that I don’t even have time to be furious. I pivoted over that rail on my hips just as if I were doing the uneven bars in a gymnastics competition, but, having no control, I flipped head over heels. Thank God the stairwell’s wide enough that I don’t crack my legs on the far side and break something, but the lack of contact with anything solid means that I’m completely disoriented; I’m falling like Alice down the rabbit hole.
    My back’s arched, my hands are outstretched, my legs are flailing. Terror is screaming in my brain like a burst of white lightning, a firework exploding inside my head. If I don’t do something fast— really fast—I’m going to crash to the hall floor far below. I’ll be lucky if I just break a leg.
    I could break my back.
    I could die.
    In a spasm of utter panic, I jackknife as if I were doing a flip between two bars. That gives me a little more momentum, a little more control, because as I come out of it my back is stretched to its full length, my arms reaching almost out of their sockets. It feels like Ricky, my old gymnastics coach, has his feet jammed into my upper thighs, and is leaning back, grabbing onto my wrists, pulling my back so long I have to bite my lip not to yell in pain.
    My fingers are flexing frantically, reaching for anything they can find as I hurtle down the stairwell in an ugly, crooked swan dive. This is my one chance, this mad lunge across empty space, and if I don’t make it, the consequences could be lethal—
    Yes! My fingers slam into something and immediately, frantically, grip onto it as if I were drowning and it were a life