Last Day of Love by Lauren Kate Read Free Book Online

cleared, oak trees’ arms embraced her with their fuzzy Spanish moss, and she was just feet pounding, legs burning, heart beating, arms pumping, blending into trails until she became something far away.
    She thought of the meet. Maybe she could channel desperation into something useful. If she could just make it back to school in time …
    The week before, the last of the heavy casts she’d had to wear on her shattered wrists (the right one had been broken so severely it had to be reset three times) had finally been sawed off. She’d hated wearing the thing and couldn’t wait to see it shredded. But last week, when the orthopedist tossed the cast in the trash and pronounced her healed, it sounded like a joke.
    As Eureka pulled up to a four-way stop sign on the empty road, bay branches bent in an arc over the sunroof. She pushed the green sleeve of her school cardigan up. She turned her right wrist over a few times, studying her forearm. The skin was as pale as the petal of a magnolia. Her right arm’s circumference seemed to have shrunk to half the sizeof her left. It looked freakish. It made Eureka ashamed. Then she became ashamed of her shame. She was alive; her mother wasn’t—
    Tires screeched behind her. A hard
bump
split her lips open in a yelp of shock as Magda lurched forward. Eureka’s foot ground against the brake. The airbag bloomed like a jellyfish. The force of the rough fabric stung her cheeks and nose. Her head snapped against the headrest. She gasped, the wind knocked out of her, as every muscle in her body clenched. The din of crunching metal made the music on the stereo sound eerily new. Eureka listened to it for a moment, hearing the lyric “always not fair” before she realized she’d been hit.
    Her eyes shot open and she jerked at the door handle, forgetting she had her seat belt on. When she lifted her foot off the brake, the car rolled forward until she jerked it into park. She turned Magda off. Her hands flailed under the deflating airbag. She was desperate to free herself.
    A shadow fell across her body, giving her the strangest sense of déjà vu. Someone was outside the car, looking in.
    She looked up—
    “You,” she whispered involuntarily.
    She had never seen the boy before. His skin was as pale as her uncasted arm, but his eyes were turquoise, like the ocean in Miami, and this made her think of Diana. She sensed sadness in their depths, like shadows in the sea. His hair was blond, not too short, a little wavy at the top. She could tellthere were plenty of muscles under his white button-down. Straight nose, square jaw, full lips—the kid looked like Paul Newman from Diana’s favorite movie,
Hud
, except he was so pale.
    “You could help me!” she heard herself shout at the stranger. He was the hottest guy she’d ever yelled at. He might have been the hottest guy she’d ever seen. Her exclamation made him jump, then reach around the open door just as her fingers finally found the seat belt. She tumbled gracelessly out of the car and landed in the middle of the dusty road on her hands and knees. She groaned. Her nose and cheeks stung from the airbag burn. Her right wrist throbbed.
    The boy crouched down to help her. His eyes were startlingly blue.
    “Never mind.” She stood up and dusted off her skirt. She rolled her neck, which hurt, though it was nothing compared to the shape she’d been in after the other accident. She looked at the white truck that had hit her. She looked at the boy.
    “What is wrong with you?” she shouted. “Stop sign!”
    “Sorry.” His voice was soft and mellow. She wasn’t sure he sounded sorry.
    “Did you even try to stop?”
    “I didn’t see—”
    “Didn’t see the large red car directly in front of you?” She spun around to examine Magda. When she saw the damage, she cursed so the whole parish could hear.
    The rear end looked like a zydeco accordion, caved in upto the backseat, where her license plate was now wedged. The back window