Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book by Adrian Birch Page A

way down into her
sweatpants. Bryce tried to hold both of her arms to her sides, but as soon as
he let up a little, she would just pull away and start… touching herself, doing something that would have looked a lot like
masturbation if she weren’t unconscious. It was bizarre and terrifying. And horrible. I didn’t know how to react to seeing my best
friend this way. It was like Morgan had been replaced by
somebody else .
    I’d gotten so used to
the sound of her quick, raspy breathing that when it stopped, it was like the
whole world died with her.
    Everything was
suddenly silent and still. There wasn’t even the sound of pigeons tiptoeing on
the tin roof. Bryce just sat there, staring at Morgan’s motionless body.
    I remembered playing
with Morgan on this very hayloft when we were kids. We used to hollow out nests
in the loose hay and call them our “houses” and pretend we were visiting each
other and that we were grown up. We used to plan out who we’d marry.
    Now, just like that,
she was dead.
    Without my best
friend, I felt numb. Not just numb to Morgan lying dead in the hay at my feet,
but numb to everything. Numb to my family, numb to Bryce. Numb to myself. At
the moment, I didn’t care if anyone lived or died.
    Then something
happened that I had no explanation for.
    Morgan’s body was on
its back, her head thrown back at an awkward angle. When she’d died, she’d
frozen in that stiff position, her slender white neck exposed and her mouth
tipped open. She’d been lying like that for ten or fifteen minutes while I’d
just been sitting there, shocked, trying to comprehend what had happened.
    But then—very,
very slowly—she moved.
    As if she’d been
simply sleeping peacefully, she stretched her shoulders. Then she slowly turned
onto her side and rested her head on her hands.
    “What the—”
Bryce turned to me, stunned, then he stared back at
Morgan.
    I placed a finger on
her neck and took her pulse.
    Her pulse was strong
and fluttering away normally. Her awful panting was gone. She took slow, even
breaths and released them without any rasping sound at all. Even some of her
color had come back.
    “She’s alive .”
    I collapsed on top of
her and sobbed.
    “Morgan,” I whispered.
“I thought you left me. Don’t you ever fucking leave me again! ”
    I still couldn’t rouse
Morgan to consciousness, but I was almost positive now that she was going to be
okay. She suddenly looked extraordinarily healthy, almost angelic.
    “Jesus Christ,” Bryce
whispered. “I’ve never, ever seen anything like that.” He shook his head in
disbelief. “I’m no doctor, but maybe the fever just had to break? I thought she
was gone.”
    “So did I,” I
whispered, holding Morgan’s hand.
    “I guess you just
never know about things like this.” Bryce laughed softly, still amazed at what
we’d witnessed. “A little while ago I was held up in the hospital overnight.
They thought it was dysentery or something. I guess I had a bad chicken taco in
El Paso. I was in bad shape, but I woke up feeling totally fine. They wanted to
keep me there at the hospital, but I didn’t want to cancel my concert here in
Muldoon. So I just walked out and left.”
    I laughed. “Remind me
not to eat the tacos in El Paso.”
    I was elated. I’d
thought that I’d never laugh again. A moment earlier I honestly wouldn’t have
cared if I died, but now that Morgan was not only alive, but getting better, I
had a new hope that maybe things might turn out okay after all.
    Bryce was here with me,
too, and he didn’t seem to want to leave. I would have been happy just to sit
here talking with him all day about anything other than whatever crazy shit was
happening in Muldoon.
    I let go of Morgan’s
hand and sat back in the hay.
    “So you never miss a
concert, or what?” I asked Bryce.
    He shrugged and
smiled. “Not if I can help it.”
    “How’d it all happen
for you? You just loved country music so much you couldn’t stop playing