Read Online Heart on a Shoestring by Marilyn Grey - Free Book Online

paying attention. Like a basketball left on a staircase. Step on it when your joyfully skipping down the steps and you fall. Head first. And love catches you. Like a safety net you never knew existed.
    That’s something Lizzy enjoyed. Most creatures took baby steps down the canyon, across the canyon, and back up the canyon. Even the birds feared their wings and walked with the other animals. Not Lizzy. She took one look at the other side and knew she’d rather die leaping than spend her life walking to the other side and possibly never make it.
    So when Turtle stood at the edge of the cliff, peering over and wondering how a reptile could make it to the other side without falling thousands of feet to its death, Lizzy pat his back and said, “Faith is hoping for things you can’t see. If you believe, anything is possible.”
    But Turtle didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. Lizzy didn’t expect him to. Not yet. Sometimes you have to completely lose faith in yourself in order to trust something else, and he obviously believed in himself more than the wind that would carry him safely to the other side.
    Perhaps, Lizzy thought, if she jumped first maybe Turtle would follow. 
    So, she did.
    But he didn’t follow. 

    I didn’t remember falling asleep, so when I woke up alone on the rocky shore I jumped up and looked around. Completely forgot where I was. After collecting my thoughts and calming down, I noticed Derek tossing rocks into the water a few yards away. He hadn’t left me alone. With the spiders. And snakes.
    Very kind of him. Very kind indeed. 
    I opened my journal and the scratchy handwriting after mine confused me for a second, until I realized Derek must’ve read my entry and added more himself. I looked at him, but he pretended not to notice me. How embarrassing that he read my journal. I’m normally an open book, but only when I choose to be.
    I focused on his handwriting and read. 

    Lizzy thinks she’s jumped to the other side of the canyon but it’s an optical illusion…. She feels like she has rid her past and ripped every arrow from her heart, but that doesn’t happen in two days on a camping trip….. They say it takes twice as long to heal a wound as it did to make it…. Not sure how true that is, but either way Lizzy and Turtle both have a choice to make every day…. To try to be better, happier, nice and kind, and possibly find a way to love, or to dwell in the pain and live in an emotional prison…. Yeah, so, Lizzy seems to be making the right steps toward a happy, better person. 
    Where does that leave ole Turtle? Old. That’s where. Old and tortured by nightmares that are so vivid he can barely sleep 5 hours a night without wanting to die….. and Turtle doesn’t fabricate, if anything he withholds. 
    But I guess there’s one good thing. He found a lizard who is really sweet and pretty and she sometimes wonders if she loves him. He sometimes wonders the same. 
    And although it may not be reality, the wondering makes him want to live again . 

    Well, certainly an array of grammatical errors. Ever heard of a period? You know, the thing that ends a sentence.Writing is not his speciality, but that’s okay. Stop ignoring his words , the one side of myself said to the other side of myself. I need to ignore those words , the other side said to the one side. You are falling in love with him and you like it . Not sure which side of me said that to which side, but I ignored her. Or me.
    I shook my head. Am I the only person who has conversations with various sides of myself? Internal wars on the field of my heart. My heart is a battlefield. Cue the eighties dance moves. Yes. Okay. 
    Right. 
    Derek finally walked toward me. I stood and followed him back up the hill, in silence, ignoring him trying to ignore me. And the growing, sweltering, give-me-a-fan-so-I-can-calm-down tension between us.
    Growing up, my brothers always told me I wanted things I couldn’t have or things I