"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Things with the Same Name" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

Beneath me, stretched full-length, was a me-sized lump in the snow.

My body, and I wasn't in it anymore.

I must be dead.
I must be — no!

No. That couldn't be it. Dead? Dead? Maybe I was dreaming? I —

A snow plow came along and gave the body a better burial. The snow it piled went right
through me, till I was standing there, up to my neck in snow, or the snow was up to my neck
in me, and I couldn't even feel it.
This was dead?

My mind spun around with nothing to stop it.
Eventually I slowed down and tried to puzzle it out.
At least I didn't feel the cold anymore. I wasn't hungry or thirsty or tired. I couldn't figure out
how I felt.

I was on a mountain pass road, in the middle of a very snowy night, in a big high snowbank
the snowplow had pushed over on top of what was left of my body. I couldn't see my breath.
I could barely see myself.

Was I supposed to do something? Was that why I was dead but still here?

I walked out into the road and looked down at myself. I looked like me.
Snowflakes hissed and sizzled down thick and right through me. I waited through some long
patches of quiet. Two cars drove past, didn't slow. I wouldn't have known what to say if they
had stopped.

What a stupid time to walk out of Mom's. If I had thought, if I had waited, if I had packed, I
could have used the return part of my bus ticket and gone back to my apartment in Ewell. I
could have been warm and safe instead of dead.
Then again, how could Mom hurt me now? I thought about drifting back to Mom's house.
Maybe I could scare her now. Even if I couldn't scare her, at least she was more entertaining
than trees. She would watch TV, and I could watch it too. She even liked some of the shows
I liked.

I walked toward Ridgeway and Mom. Presently I started to feel drifty. When I looked down
at myself, I saw less of me. My hands were almost gone, and my legs below the knees. I
walked some more, saw the me fade.

Why was I here, if I was just going to fade out?
I turned and headed back up the mountain.

When I looked, I saw my knees had returned, and then my calves, my ankles. Finally my
shoes showed up at the ends of my legs, right where they belonged. The closer I got to
where I had left my body, the more of me was there.

Was I tethered to the body, which I wasn't even using anymore? It was stupid. But I wasn't