Chapter 24: Saturday Morning

My alarm went off at 6:40 on a Saturday in August.

I lay still with my eyes closed and listened.

A bird sang in the lavender. Phillip breathed slowly against my shoulder. Nobody was clicking a lighter anywhere in the world.

I opened my eyes, and it was only a morning.

"You're awake," Phillip said into the pillow.

"It's the SAT."

"I know." He lifted his head. His hair stuck up in the back. "Do you want me to say good luck, or is that bad luck?"

"Say it. I need all of it."

"Good luck."

I kissed him, and then I got up to find my pencils.

I dressed in the blue sweater.

Phillip waited outside by the hatchback.

It was Maggie's old car again. He had paid a mechanic he trusted forty dollars to go over every inch of it on Thursday, with me standing beside him.

"Brakes are good," Phillip said. "I tested them at the end of the driveway. I'll test them again at every stop sign."

"You don't have to narrate."

"I do, a little. Maggie's father hung the lobby video over the register, by the way. The diner's full." He opened the passenger door for me.

I stopped with my hand on the roof.

He saw it, and he stepped back at once.

"Tell me," he said.

"This is the first time I've gotten into a car you were driving."

"I know."

"You said you'd stop it a hundred times."

"I would."

I looked at him standing in the sun with his hands out of his pockets, giving me room.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Killed Me Then Loved Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.