Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page A

neck and you can't stop shivering; that's the witch coming too close. She wears a flannel jacket that turns her invisible. She sounds like leaves falling do wn.
    Willie was in our class. He had eyes sunk so far in his head they sometimes disappeared, and he smelled like oranges. He was allowed to wear his Teva eandale even after it got cold out, and his feet would get muddy and blue, and my mother would shake her head and say, “See?” and I did-I saw, and I w ished I could do it too. The thing was, one day Willie was sitting next to me at snack, dunking his graham crackers Into his milk until they all becam e a slushy mountain at the bottom . . . and the next day, he was gone. He w as gone, and he never came back.
    At the hiding spot under the slide, Ashleigh tells us that the witch has take n him. “She says your name, and after that, you can't help it, you'll do anyt hing she says. You'll go anywhere she wants.”
    Lettie starts to cry. “She'll eat him. She'll eat Willie.”
    “Too late” Ashleigh says, and In her hand is a white, white bone. It looks too small to come from Willie. It looks too small to come from anyt hing that ever walked. But I know better than anyone what It is: I found it, digging under the dandelions near the fence. I was the one who gave it to A shleigh.
    “She's got Danny right now” Ashleigh says.
    Miss Lydia told us during circle time that Danny was sick. We'd put his face up on the Who's Here board, flipped over to the sad side. After recess, we were all going to make him a card. “Danny's sick,” I tell Ashleigh, but she just looks at me like I'm the dumbest pereon ever. “Did you think they would tell us the truth?” she says.
    So when Miss Lydia isn't watching, we slip under the fence where the dogs and the rabbits sometimes get in-Ashleigh and Peter and Brianna and me, th e bravest. We will save Danny. We will get him before the witch does. But Miss Lydia finds us first. She makes us go inside and sit in Time Out and says we should never, never, ever leave the playground. Don't we know we could get hurt?
    Brianna looks at me. Of course we know; it's why we left in the first place. Peter starts to cry, and tells her about the witch, and what Ashleigh said. Mi ss Lydia's eyebrows come together like a fat black caterpillar. "Is this true?
    "
    “Peter's a liar. He made the whole thing up,” Ashleigh says, and she doesn't even blink.
    That's how I know that the witch has already gotten to her.

Perfect Match
    TWO
    Just so you know: if this ever happens to you, you will not be ready. You wi ll walk down a street and wonder how people can behave as if the whole world has not been tipped on its axis. You will comb your mind for signs and sign als, certain that one moment-aha!-will trip you like a twisted root. You wil l bang your fist so hard against the stall door in the public bathroom that your wrist will bruise; you'll start to cry when the man at the tollbooth te lls you to have a nice day. You will ask yourself How come; you will ask you rself What if.
    Caleb and I drive home with an elephant sitting between us. At least this is how it seems: this huge bulk driving us to our separate sides, impossible t o ignore, and yet we both pretend we cannot see it. In the backseat, Nathani el sleeps, holding a half-eaten lollipop given to him by Dr. Robichaud. I am having trouble breathing. It is that elephant, again, sitting so close to me with one elbow crushing my chest. “He has to tell us who,” I say finally, the words breaking free like a river. “He has to.”
    “He can't.”
    That is the issue, in a nutshell. Nathaniel is not able to speak, even if he w ants to. He doesn't know how to read or write yet. Until he can communicate, t here is no one to blame. Until he can communicate, this is not a case; this is just a heartache.
    “Maybe the psychiatrist is wrong,” Caleb says.
    I turn in my seat. “You don't believe Nathaniel?”
    “What I believe is that he hasn't said