By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters

before leaving the house. Timing is everything. When and how. The route to school is mapped in my head. Right on 26th Avenue. Left on Wadsworth Boulevard. Three miles, approximately, to Alameda and the Belmar Shopping Center, then two blocks east to St. Mary’s.
    It’s twenty minutes by car. What I need to know is how long it will take me on foot to get home from school.
    I didn’t realize Kim meant she was going to follow me in the car.
    She putters along behind, pulling into driveways or side streets every few minutes to let traffic pass. One guy honks and flips her the bird.
    Flip him back, Kim.
    She just takes it.
    A new Walgreens is going up at the halfway point. My feet hurt. I should’ve changed out of my school loafers. Except they’re the only shoes I have now.
    Kim draws up alongside me and rolls down the passenger window, “Where are you going, Daelyn?”
    She doesn’t know the route by now?
    “What are you doing?”
    Clocking time, Kim.
    You won’t know until it’s over. You won’t find me in time.
    I suppose I could do it at night, drug them before they go to bed, but like I said, I don’t have access to drugs. Anyway, drugs are unpredictable. I might kill them, and that is not my intent.
    No, this time they won’t even think to check on me. They’ll both be at work.
    The Comfort Dental sign rises in the distance. My throat is dry and my legs ache. This is more physical exertion than my body is used to. Worthless shell of a body. I hope they cremate it.
    Don’t keep the urn.
    Finally I see the school. The fence around St. Mary’s Academy. A raw cough rips my vocal cords—what’s left of them.
    “Hey.” His voice carries across the street. “Daelyn.” In my peripheral vision, I see him launch off a hammock on his porch and lope toward me. He seems perfectly fine. He isn’t sick. He has that stupid rat in his hand.
    “Whassup?” He falls into step beside me. I’m moving again. I’m half a block from the gate.
    I panic. There’s a flaw in my plan. I don’t have a watch. Time means nothing, except for now.
    I whirl and frantically jab at my wrist. Santana frowns. Then he gets it, because he says, “I don’t know. I don’t wear a watch.”
    Damn. DAMN.
    Kim’s CR-V chugs to the curb. I rush over and lean my head in the window. Five forty-eight on the car clock. My breathing slows. I calculate: An hour and thirteen minutes. Add three minutes from the girls’ restroom by the office where I’ll wait for the all clear to leave.
    I’ll have to go to first period, to make sure my attendance is recorded. Then I’ll write a note to my teacher that my throat feels swollen and I have to go to the office to call my mom.
    “You don’t look so hot,” he says. “I mean, you always look hot. But you look all red and puffy.”
    I hack a dry cough.
    “Are you all right?”
    I bend over to wheeze in a lung-filling breath.
    He touches my back.
    Don’t touch me!
    “Daelyn?” Kim calls out the window. A door slams.
    My arm is yanked backward, pulling me, my body across the street and onto the bench. He hovers over me.
    I can’t catch my breath.
    “You need water?” he asks.
    I’m gasping.
    “Here, hold Hervé.” The rat drops in my lap.
    “I’ll run in and get her some water,” I hear him say. “Does she have asthma or something? Do you have an inhaler?”
    Kim says, “Water. Yes. Thank you.”
    There’s a rat in my lap. A silent scream claws up my chest and constricts my breathing even more. The rat leaps onto my shoulder and a scree sounds in my ears. Is that me? The scaly tail tickles my arm.
    Kim stands there.
    Take it! I want to scream. Get it off me.
    “Does it bite?” she asks.
    How do I know? The whiskers tickle my neck.
    Kim lowers herself to the bench, keeping her distance. “Why didn’t you ask me to drive you here if you needed to come back to school?” She sounds mad.
    “Did you forget some homework?” She lets out a little shriek as the rat leaps into her