Read When I Find Her for Free Online

of weeks.
    But Simon still won’t look at me.
    “Sorry,” Ivy whispers. “I didn’t mean to call you a jerk. If that’s the last thing I say to–” Her face falls. “That’s not what I meant, either.”
    I shrug. “It’s okay.” I whack her with a pillow, she laughs and aims for my head.
    She’s what you call an over-analyzer. She didn’t use to be this bad, but since my diagnosis, she goes over everything she says to me and always finds something to regret.
    And Simon still won’t look at me.
    Burgen once asked me what my earliest vivid memory is. It has to do with Simon. He was just under a year old, hadn’t learned to walk yet. I was six. We were in the backyard. It wasn’t fenced in yet. My mom put Simon on a blanket and went inside to get his pacifier, since he was crying for it and it was just inside the door. In the seconds she was gone, a big dog bolted from the back of a dumpster and attacked Simon’s leg. It bit right through the cloth into his shin. I beat the dog off with a stick. Even when the dog turned and attacked my arm, I just kept fighting it. Both Simon and I required stitches and rabies shots. Simon lost a lot of blood. I was the hero of the neighborhood, my mom told me, for saving my younger brother. They even put me in the newspaper. I don’t remember much of that, I only remember my great relief when that monster stopped chewing on my baby brother.
    Sadly, I’m no longer a hero for Simon.
    I gulp down that reality.
    We seat ourselves around the kitchen table as my dad comes through the front door, home from work at the family gas station that he and my mom bought ten years ago. He looks like the shaggy grass. At some painful point, he stopped looking after himself, too.
    “Hi Natalie,” he says to Mom as she gets up and takes his lunch cooler. I wish they would kiss, but they never do anymore.
    “How was your day, Tom?”
    He mumbles, “Fine,” and cleans up at the sink.
    “How is everyone?” he asks when we’re all seated again.
    “Fine,” we reply one by one. We are far from fine. We’re on the brink of losing it, of collapsing as a family. If I tell them about the Vegas apples… oh, man .
    Someone must’ve turned the TV to a comedy station, because the canned laughter from the program fills our awkward silence at the table.
    I recall something else Dr. Burgen said to me today. That I should communicate all of my concerns to my parents and siblings, no matter how difficult. So I broach what’s been on my mind for weeks, ever since I read it online on the Hospital Help Forum.
    “If I do wind up... going ,” I say to my parents slowly, carefully, “I hope you don’t get divorced.”
    How is it possible that awkward silence can get even more stilted?
    Simon finally looks up from his plate, bleary-eyed. I notice a bruise on his cheek and his ear.
    “Stop talking nonsense,” my mom says, passing the salad. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re in remission, remember?” She gives me a shaky smile.
    But I need to explain. “I read that most parents who lose a kid wind up–”
    “ Stop it .” Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re not going anywhere.”
    “Then promise me.”
    No one speaks.
    Simon bursts into tears. “I don’t want you to split up! What’s gonna happen to me? ”
    “Is that true?” Ivy asks Mom. “That most parents divorce if they lose a kid? But what if they have two other kids left?” Her gaze snaps to mine and her lips tremble. “Oh, I didn’t mean...sorry Luke...I didn’t mean...sorry.”
    “It’s okay.”
    She bursts into tears, then so does Mom.
    Everyone’s bawling except me and my dad, and he turns as pale as the potatoes on his plate. He gets up and walks out.
    And that is why advice from a therapist sometimes totally sucks.
     
    ∞
     
    There is one person I can tell about the time traveling.
    “You gotta help me find Jennifer,” I say to Vlad two hours later at his place, after I finished mowing the lawn. I rushed