Maybe I Will by Laurie Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

a cleansing fire. Totally relaxing as soon as the burning passed. It looked like water.
Fire water.
I laughed and poured myself another glass. By the time I finished the bottle, I was feeling pretty good.
    I decided to refill the empty bottle with water and put it back in the back of the cabinet where I’d found it. I’d be old enough to buy some real schnapps to refill it in five years, and my parents would probably never know. It seemed like the perfect plan, only while I was in the kitchen trying to refill the bottle, I got it too full, and while I was pouring water back out of it and checking to see how full it still was, I accidentally dropped it, and it shattered all over the kitchen floor.
    Normally, I’d be upset that I had a mess to clean up, but the broken bottle actually cracked me up. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was like when I was full of water, I was breakable, but now that I was out of tears and full of schnapps, I was shatterproof, and the bottle filled with water, well, of course, it had to break in my place.
    It was quite a production cleaning it all up, though—the mop, the broom, lots of paper towel and—oh sorry—no recycling this glass and paper. I wrapped all of the broken glass and wet paper towel in a brown paper grocery bag and tied that up in a plastic grocery sack, and hid that in the big garbage can out in the garage.
    There. Just like it never happened.
    I went to my room and flung myself down on the bed.
Bam! Shatterproof!
I closed my eyes and laughed like a maniac. When I opened my eyes, the room was spinning. I closed my eyes again, but there was no stopping the spinning. I started to feel so dizzy and nauseated; I knew I was going to throw up. I tried to stand upto walk to the bathroom, but the spinning only got worse. I fell back down to my knees and crawled to the toilet where I threw up. And I just kept throwing up. Even when there wasn’t anything left inside me to throw up, I still kept throwing up. I flushed my guts down the toilet.
Nothing left but the empty, shatterproof bottle.
    I needed a shower, but the idea of standing up for very long seemed impossible, so I filled the bathtub with hot water.
Only hot, no cold. Scalding hot. Fire water.
I struggled into the tub and sub-merged myself in the boiling water to sterilize myself. It burned, but it felt good. I let myself sink all the way down until the water covered my mouth and the steam filled my nostrils. As the hot water relaxed the knots in my stomach and released the tension in all of my muscles, I felt like I might fall asleep.
To be or not to be. Just go to sleep. To dream… or not. Off to Neverland. Never-again-land. Let your body slip down a couple more inches and never wake up . . . Maybe I will.

9
    â€œIt is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
    â€”Macbeth
, Act V, Scene v, Lines 26-28
    I AWOKE WITH a start. The water had cooled almost to the point of chilling me. When I tried to stand, my head pounded and my eyes burned. I sat back down and splashed the cool water on my face.
Just get yourself dried off and back to bed before Mom and Dad get home.
It seemed like a simple enough plan, but it was all I could do to roll myself over the side of the tub and out onto the bathmat. My head pounded relentlessly as I dried myself off, pulled on a pair of sweats, and finally escaped into my bed.
    I felt my mom’s hand on my forehead, then on my cheeks. “No fever.”
    I rubbed my eyes and tried to sit up. A sledgehammer smacked me right between the eyes. I winced and fell back. “I don’t feel very well,” I mumbled.
    â€œI guess not,” Dad said. “It’s almost noon.”
    â€œMaybe it was something I ate.”
Or drank. Let’s not go there.
    â€œAre you sick to your stomach?” Mom asked. “What did you eat?”
    â€œLast night? I don’t know. Stuff at Cassie’s.”
    â€œHow do you