Read Online Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland - Free Book Online

city. I might crash with her tonight. You all right to get the bus on your own?”
    â€œOh my stars, Grace Town, however will I make it home unaccompanied?”
    â€œI’ll take that as a yes.”
    Grace started to climb, but after taking three steps, she paused and looked back at me. “I’m glad I met you, Henry.”
    â€œI’m glad I met you, Grace.”
    Then I stood there and watched her leave, the light from her phone growing dimmer and dimmer as she was swallowed by the drowning dark, until there was nothing left of her at all, not even a sound, and I was alone in the blackness.
    My feelings were like a knot inside my gut. Normally I knew exactly what my emotions were. Happy, sad, angry, embarrassed: they were all easy enough to catalog and label. But this was something new. A kind of web of thoughts that had offshoots in all directions, none of which made particular sense. A huge feeling, a feeling as big as a galaxy, a feeling so large and twisted that my poor little mind couldn’t comprehend it. Like when you hear that the Milky Way is made up of 400 billion stars, and you think
Oh, shit, that’s pretty big
but your puny human brain will never really be able to comprehend how gigantic it is because we were built too small. That’s what it felt like.
    I knew when girls liked me. Or, at the very least, I knew when girls were flirting with me. Grace Town wasn’t flirting. Grace Town didn’t like me. Or, if she
was
and she
did
, she wasn’t expressing it in any way I was used to.
    I also knew when I liked girls. Abigail Turner (from kindergarten) and Sophi Zhou (from elementary school) had been obsessions. Infatuations. Grace didn’t feel like that. I wasn’t even particularly sure I was attracted to her. Therewas no burning desire there. I didn’t want to tear off her clothes and kiss her. I just fel t . .  . drawn to her. Like gravity. I wanted to orbit her, be around her, the way the Earth orbits the sun.
    â€œDo not be an idiot, Henry,” I said as I turned on my phone’s flashlight and climbed the rusty spiral staircase toward the night sky, thinking of Icarus and his hubris and how appropriate the metaphor was (I was kind of proud of it, actually). “Do not fall for this girl.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    When I got home (Mom picked me up, bless her), I opened up the Notes app on my phone and wrote:
    Draft Two
    Because I have never met anyone that I wanted in my life that way before.
    But you.
    I could make an exception for you.

“MPDG,” SAID LOLA Tuesday afternoon after school. She was lying upside down on my couch, boots on the headrest, head dangling off the edge, halfheartedly playing
FIFA
. “That’s some serious MPDG behavior right there.”
    â€œWhat’s MPDG?” Murray said.
    â€œManic Pixie Dream Girl. I mean, she takes Henry on an adventure to an abandoned railway station filled with fish and then talks about the universe? Real people don’t do that.”
    â€œWell, she did,” I said, “and it was kind of awesome.”
    â€œNo, this is
bad
. MPDGs are dangerous territory.”
    â€œWait, so how do the fish live underground?” Murray said. He’d been stroking his peach fuzz with a befuddled look on his face ever since I’d mentioned them. He must have washed his hair the night before (a rare occurrence), because it had reverted to its natural state: a lion’s mane with the consistency of cotton candy. It enveloped much of his shoulders and face, to the point that he’d had to borrow several hair clips from Lato keep it out of his eyes. “Is it like an enclosed ecosystem or something? How’d they even get there?”
    â€œProbably connected to some kind of water source nearby,” Lola said. “Birds land in the water with fish eggs stuck to their legs, something like that.”
    â€œDo you think they’re