Read Online Before Wings by Beth Goobie - Free Book Online

the sentence thing. She stared intensely at the toe of his boot.
    “So help me with this fence. Here, grab this.” He handed her a rail and she held it as he hammered it into place.
    “I’m supposed to be at Connor’s sailboat session,” she said, as if she owed Paul an explanation. “But ...”
    “But what?” He straightened and looked at her. He was about an inch taller, his eyes were brownish-green, his lips a soft flush of red.
    “Uh.” She couldn’t speak. “Last night ...”
    “Initiation?” He turned back to the fence. “So, how’d it go?”
    He was breaking rule number three! Finally, a partner in sanity. Her shyness vanished. “Did you have to do it?”
    “They tried to make me last summer, but I’m never here at night. Wild man capers with city-slicker tough guys,” he said softly. “What a blast.”
    She hesitated, unsure if he was including her. “They said Aunt Erin knows about it. I doubt it. She’d never let them get away with breaking all those rules.”
    “She knows,” Paul said quietly. “She used to be summer staff. She went to deep-woods parties twenty years ago.”
    Adrien gaped. She could not imagine her aunt doing anything that ... social.
    Paul grinned at her expression. “Who cares what theydo, as long as they don’t tear down any buildings or raise the dead.”
    “But the training manual says—”
    “They show up for their jobs in the morning and treat the kids okay. It’s their business what they do in the middle of the night.”
    “Then why don’t you go?” demanded Adrien.
    “I don’t like the company,” he shrugged, then paused. “What exactly do they do out there, frolicking in the woods?”
    “It’s not Lord of the Flies ,” she said. “There aren’t any sticks sharpened at both ends. It’s mostly drinking. They make the new staff do something stupid, so I left.”
    “You don’t like parties?”
    “I didn’t like the way they were talking about Aunt Erin,” she burst out. “They suck up to her all day, then talk her down when they get out there at night. If they don’t like her, they should act like it to her face.”
    “Like you do?”
    “Yeah.” She looked at him breathlessly, challenging him to tell her she was wrong. His eyes moved slowly over her face.
    “You want a cigarette?” he asked. “I get a mid-morning break. C’mon, we’ll go into the trees so no one sees us.” He touched her bare arm and she almost cried out at the sudden heat.
    “Um, here’s fine,” she said. “I, uh, like the horses.”
    His smile faded. “Sure. We’ll watch the horses.” He fished the pack out of his lumber jacket and handed her a cigarette. “Careful,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Smoking kills ten out of ten, y’know.”
    “D’you really believe,” she asked slowly, “that you know exactly when and where you’re going to die?”
    He gave a short laugh and leaned on the fence, watching the horses at the other end of the paddock. After a pause, she realized that had been his response.
    “Well, aren’t you going to do something about it?” she demanded. “Make sure it doesn’t happen?”
    “What’re you doing about yours?” he asked, not looking at her.
    “I can’t do anything, it’s my brain. My blood vessels are warped. Yours aren’t.”
    He stared moodily into the trees. “It’s going to happen, one way or another.”
    “That’s an attitude,” she said flatly.
    “Oh yeah?” He turned to look at her, his face derisive. “You’re telling me I’ve been dreaming an attitude for two years? It’s my attitude that keeps killing me a hundred different ways? You’re telling me my attitude put you in my dreams before I ever saw or heard about you?”
    He was so intense, the air about him throbbed. “No,” she stammered. “That’s not what I meant.”
    “Good,” he said tersely. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
    He ducked through the rails and left her standing alone with her cigarette.
    The girls in the