Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
“I won’t,” I said, managing to wedge myself into a small open gap next to them. “Josie’s mad.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “She’s a girl. Girls get mad about stupid stuff.”
“Like?”
“Like I was joking about something she said, and that made her mad. And she said she’d be my girlfriend for the rest of the summer, and I said no. Maybe she’s mad about that. I don’t know.”
Mom chuckled. “She offered to be your girlfriend for the rest of the summer?”
“Yes. Because I let her win a race.”
“You’re a little too young to have a girlfriend. And I really like Josie, so I think it’s best that you stay friends.”
I didn’t mention that I would have said yes to her being my girlfriend had she not made the no kissing stipulation.
That night, my eyes were glued to the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Josie. Just when I was about to give up and close my blinds, she ran out the front door and grabbed her bike. As she walked it toward the garage, she glanced back at my window. I jumped to the side so she wouldn’t see me. My heart pounded, and I wasn’t sure why.
What was the point of hoping to see her if I didn’t want her to see me too?
Over the next nine years, I spent a lot of time at that window hoping to catch a glimpse of Josie Watts. Hiding from her. Hiding my feelings for her.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Dr. Watts, do you believe in God?” Dr. Cornwell, the Chief Medical Examiner, asks me as he documents tattoos from the decedent on his table at the opposite end of the autopsy suite. A flock of interns surround his table, church mice with perked ears and curious eyes while four other forensic pathologists dissect their first cases of the day.
I focus on my table holding a male teenager who took a round of ammunition in his chest last night. “I like the idea of God.”
“So that’s a no?” Cornwell asks.
I glance up, eyeing him through my goggles and face shield—what tiny sliver I can see of him through the congested parameter of interns. “Depends. Do you define the word ‘believe’ as something you hold as a truth or opinion?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. I can be more liberal—in a nonpolitical sense—with my beliefs if others willingly interpret them as my opinions. But if they are interpreted as what I believe to be truths or facts, then I find it best to limit my beliefs to things that have little disputable evidence. So saying I like the idea of God is my way of saying I acknowledge that I can’t prove God’s existence, but I wish I could because it’s comforting to think there’s something greater than us … than this life.”
“Now, I know why you’re still single,” Dr. Cornwell says, eliciting some chuckles from the peanut gallery. “You don’t always have to be right, Watts. Well, I need you to always be right here, when it counts. But outside of work, it wouldn’t kill you to indulge a little.”
I bite my tongue. I think he just implied I’m a prude or someone quite boring, not so adventurous. “I indulge.”
“Now I’m curious. Tell me you follow your horoscope or get your palm read. Do you avoid black cats and walking under ladders? Have you ever had bad luck after breaking a mirror? Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Vampires and werewolves. Not ghosts. Come on, Dr. Cornwell. Ghosts … what are you? Eighty?”
He turns seventy next month, and he’s really sensitive about his age, not as sensitive as he is about losing his hair, but still … I think he’ll always be young at heart.
“Have you ever autopsied a vampire, Dr. Watts?”
“No. That would be nearly impossible,” I say.
“Because they don’t exist?”
“No. Because they don’t really die. I don’t think they can be killed either. They have to be destroyed which means there would not be anything left to autopsy.” It’s my turn to elicit laughter from the peanut gallery.
God, I wish I could see Dr. Cornwell’s face behind his mask. Is he smirking? He rarely smiles, so a smirk would feel like a total win for me today.
“Dr. Watts graduated top of her class. She thought she wanted to stare at diseased tissue all day through a microscope and diagnose diseases. Then she tried her hand at general surgery. Then … she met me. I’ve trained a lot of young doctors in my life, but none have shown as much natural talent for … dare I say, disassembling and reassembling the human body quite like Dr. Watts.”
A few of the interns navigate from his table to mine. I’m now the interesting one in the room, and they’re curious. What do I have that they might see in themselves?
“Spooky,” I say.
One of the other pathologists uses a bone saw for a bit before the room returns to its normal white noise from the ventilation system.