Read This Is How I Find Her for Free Online

shuffle in and take their seats in the U-shaped row of desks until I’m the only one still standing.
    â€œI can’t find it,” Mr. Jackson says, straightening up and turning to face me. He peers at my schedule. “Sorry about that. What’s your name again?”
    I feel the rest of the class sitting there, waiting for this to be over. Out of the corner of my eye, I see James watching me. And I think I see the edge of Leila’s mouth turn up in a smirk. I remember again how I imagined her this morning, waving one arm after me in a gesture that said, Her? She’s nobody.
    â€œSophie Canon,” I say. But somehow my voice runs out halfway through, so I swallow the “on.” My face starts to feel hot.
    â€œWell, welcome,” Mr. Jackson says. He sweeps one hand toward an empty desk at the back of the U. “Have a seat.”
    He launches into an explanation of this week’s reading assignment, interrupting himself to remind everyone that words from the first few chapters will be on Friday’s vocab quiz, but I catch only about one word in every six he says. When I glance at the other side of the room, I think I see James looking toward me, but his eyes flick away quickly, and I’m not actually sure he was looking at all.
    I doodle absently in the corner of the vocabulary worksheet someone passes me, sketching towers of connected triangles and cubes. Mr. Jackson’s words fade into the background and the other voice, the whispery one, comes back. Was it now? I look over at the clock and imagine the ticking I’m too far away to hear. I try to draw another cube, but my hand is shaking and it comes out crooked. Or now?
    Then the voice starts asking another question. What if? What if my mother hadn’t been breathing when I leaned over her yesterday? What if I hadn’t come home right after school and run upstairs to look for her? What if she had taken the pills somewhere other than our apartment?
    Panic rises up through my body as my imagination keeps asking questions, wilder and more far-fetched, taking me far away from class and my desk and the vocabulary book sitting on it.
    And I wonder: if I’m listening to a voice in my head, a voice that makes me scared, does that mean I’m crazy too?

Eight
    I don’t go to art.
    By the time English ends, the questions have grown to a crescendo in my head, too loud for me to hear anything Mr. Jackson says. The bell pulls me out of my thoughts just as I’m starting to imagine my mother’s funeral, everyone in black dresses and suits except for my mother’s artist friends in long sweaters and scarves. Finding myself in my seat again feels like waking up from a nightmare. I’m shaking and terrified.
    I need to see my mother.
    I need to reassure myself that what I remember is what happened; that what I’m imagining isn’t real. That I found her and called the ambulance; that she’s at the hospital and on her way to being okay.
    When the bell rings, I’m one of the first out of the classroom, backpack on, feet almost skidding across the hard hallway tiles. I turn right and hurry down the stairs, thinking only of yesterday afternoon, when I climbed up to our apartment so quickly I felt it in the backs of my legs. I try to breathe evenly, to keep my heart from racing. My mother is the one who is anxious, who can sometimes talk and move impossibly quickly. I am calm.
    I’m calm.
    The nearest exit is past the art room, where I’m supposed to be spending the next period. As I walk that way, people weave around me and peel off into classrooms; as I get closer to the art room, I recognize a few of my old classmates ahead of me.
    The hallways suddenly empty out with only a minute to go before the late bell. I stop across from the art room, diagonal to the window in the wooden door, and look inside. Ms. Triste stands at the board, back to the door, all in black with her short curls bobbing