Kissing Kate by Lauren Myracle Read Free Book Online

my chest, my fingers finding its nubbly seams. On my bedside table, my Felix the Cat alarm clock ticked its muted tick. On the other side of the bed was the tall chest of drawers Jerry had found at a garage sale, its shadow stretching over the wall. Everything was familiar. Everything was safe.
    When at last I felt ready, I closed my eyes and tried an exercise in which I tensed and relaxed my muscles, working my way up from my toes to my head. With each muscle group, I imagined a flow of energy traveling up my body, spreading through me in a wave.
    The exercise was supposed to bring me closer to the dream state, but I must have done something wrong, because all that tensing made me feel weak, like I was going to faint. Plus, somehow during the course of the exercise, I forgot about my stomach altogether. I skipped from my hips and lower back straight up to my shoulders. What did that mean, I wondered?
    I kept with it, though, imagining a flow of energy moving through my body, and after a while my arms and legs started to tingle. The book said that if you felt odd vibrations, you were supposed to try and intensify them, so that’s what I did. I relaxed my muscles and kind of pushed on the vibrations, like how you’d push on something if you were trying hard to remember it. The tingling sped up until my whole body hummed, including my heart, which whammed against my ribs. Oh, God, I thought. What if I accidentally kill myself?
    I tried to pull out of it, but it was hard. My arms and legs felt leaden, and it took all of my strength to slide my hand out from under the sheet. I felt like I was moving under water. Finally I wrenched free, and everything went ZAP back to normal. My heart was no longer racing, and I could move my body again. And then I wished I hadn’t gotten so freaked out, because maybe I’d been on the verge of doing it, of slipping into a lucid dream. What if I’d ruined it?
    Not that it would have made much difference, because a minute later Beth pushed open my door and padded into my room. The light from the hallway spilled onto the floor.
    “Lissa?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”
    “No,” I said. I was irritated that she’d barged in, because even though she didn’t technically wake me up, she could have.
    “Can I sleep with you?” she asked.
    “I guess. But you better not talk.”
    “I won’t.” She walked to the other side of my bed and climbed in. “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine. You can even go first.”
    I snorted. She meant that I could scratch her back first and be done with it, which was supposedly the best strategy, since it left me free to drift off as my own back was being rubbed. But Beth almost always fell asleep before fulfilling her end of the bargain. Still, I knew I’d be lying awake either way.
    “Roll over,” I said.
    She flipped onto her stomach, and I started scratching. I listened as her breathing slowed. She sighed, and I wondered why she had woken up, what unwanted dreams had troubled her.
    I smoothed down her hair. “Sleep tight,” I whispered.

CHAPTER 7
    AT SCHOOL, KATE AND I DANCED AROUND each other like two like-charged magnets: close enough to keep tabs on each other, but with an invisible force preventing us from fully connecting. In history, she laughed too loudly at Missy Colquitt’s jokes, knowing I was watching, and in the cafeteria she sat one or two tables away when she could have chosen a seat at the opposite end of the room. For my part, I tried to strike a balance between not staring at her and yet not looking away if my glance did happen to fall on her, and the result was that I was hyperaware of every move I made, as if I were trying to act cool at a party where I felt totally out of place.
    So when I got home on Friday afternoon, I was almost giddy with relief. The week was over and I didn’t have to see Kate until Monday, and I felt like I could breathe again. And eat. I dropped my backpack on the table and opened the