These Things About Us by Laura Beege Read Free Book Online

and a smudge of white creamy stuff on my hand proved to be vanilla chocolate spread. The only thing keeping me from devouring the bagel right away was the certainty that Trace had somehow broken into my room and put the bag on my bed.
    Maybe the thing was dangerous after all. It could be poisoned.
    I was exaggerating. Probably. But I’d managed to barely glance in his direction all night, so I wasn’t about to accept possibly lethal gifts from him. I smashed the bag and the bagel with it into the trash can and crawled into bed. Somehow I managed to strip my clothes off, too, but I didn’t even bother putting on my night shirt. I just. Needed. Sleep.
     
    I wasn’t sure if I had slept five minutes or five hours. My limbs were still out, but my lights were on. I probably left them on. My drowsy brain didn’t remember. Why was I even awake? Just as I rolled over and hugged the pile of pillows and blankets, the knocking picked up again.
    Someone was outside my door. I shot up in bed. My clothes were missing. I was practically naked and someone was about to break my door with their very urgent fist.
    “Just a second,” I croaked, hoping they’d hear.
    I quickly jumped out of bed. I still had to cover up. Whisking the blanket out with too much power, it swung over my head, and my arms got tangled up in it, and my soggy legs were not up for the task of balancing the swing just yet. I lost balance and crashed into the dresser. The wood bit into my back. A muffled cry escaped my throat. Something crashed to the floor. And the blanket didn’t cover me up the way I’d hoped.
    “What the fuck are you doing in here?”
    That was Trace’s voice. Why was Trace in my room?
    “Get out!” I shrieked. “I’m not dressed!”
    “You’re bleeding.”
    “I’m not,” I screamed and tried to find my way out of the blanket.
    “Stop flailing.”
    “I’m not.”
    I felt the weight of his hands above my head and around my face as the covers were lifted and pushed back. I’d expected him to rip them off, if at all, instead he freed my head first. His long fingers picked away some loose curls, before he finally adjusted the giant thing around my shoulders like a poncho. I just blinked at him but he didn’t look at me, not really, he was looking at the outcome of his meticulous work.
    “Don’t fucking move. I’m getting toilet paper before you bleed all over the floor. – Don’t deny it again. You are bleeding.” He pointed down and I bent forward to see what he was referring to.
    There was a slim gash on my ankle. Red was pooling next to my foot. It didn’t hurt. Or maybe it did but my brain was still too busy, trying to make sense of what I’d just witnessed from Trace. He’d been almost as careful with me as with the CD.
    Trace rushed back into my room with a plastic bag and a toilet paper. I only now realized that he was still dressed from yesterday in the same dark green band shirt and faded black jeans.
    Okay, so I remembered what he’d been wearing. Maybe I had stolen a glance at him a couple of times.
    “What time is it?” I rubbed at my eyes and kneeled down with one leg, taking the toilet paper roll from him. I ripped off big chunks and dropped them onto the blood, watching the color spread through them in slow motion.
    “Around four, I guess.”
    “You should go to bed.”
    “I don’t have any pills left. Give me that.” He ripped the roll from my hand and started wiping up the blood, instead of letting it soak through the paper first.
    “You take sleeping pills?”
    “Them or the girls, whichever’s around.” He punched the stained paper into the plastic bag and threw the bag into the trash can. “You didn’t like the bagel?”
    “I don’t usually eat stuff that pops up in my room out of nowhere.” I wrapped some toilet paper around my ankle like a bandage. It looked like Dr. Frankenstein had taken to my foot.
    “It’s just a bagel.”
    “Why did you put a bagel in my room in the first