Read Online Blest by Blaise Lucey - Free Book Online

secretly a criminal, on the run from the CIA.”
    Gunner took a sharp left, which sent her smashing into the side of the car. “Yeah, that would have been more believable.” He sped up a hill and she flattened against the seat. Claire gritted her teeth against the pain. Even the cushion felt like needles against her skin. She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like when the wings came in fully.
    She looked out the window as the world rushed by them, streaks of marble-gray roads and sidewalks, buttery yellow street lights glowing lonely in the rain. Inside the car there was only the sound of the engine beneath her feet, and the soft clinking of Gunner’s keychain as it dangled from the ignition.
    Claire’s eyes traveled to Gunner’s face. His jaw was clenched, and his eyebrows were furrowed. She wondered what he was thinking. She opened her mouth to try and break the silence, but it felt like she had eaten a bunch of cotton. Or maybe sand. It was the first time in her life that she wasn’t sure what to say to Gunner.
    He hadn’t reacted very well to the news. When Gloria came home and found them both on the couch, biting pillows to keep from screaming, she had told them they were growing wings and it was time to get them removed. Gunner had gone a little bit insane. “It would have been nice to have some advance notice!” he had shouted.
    “What if we want things to be different?” Claire had asked quietly. But that had just made their mom cry even harder, and Gunner had looked disgusted. Claire had never seen him treat Gloria like this before. Whenever they got yanked out of a new school and forced to pack up all their bags, Gunner was usually the one who calmed Claire down. Claire and Gloria had a checkered past of screaming at each other or crying with each other.
    Claire turned around to look at Jim, who was quiet in the back seat. He was looking out the window with his chin in his hand, his elbow propped up against the car door. His hair was still wet, hanging over his eyebrows and dripping onto his nose. The next time they passed a light, he turned to her and they both startled, locked onto each other’s eyes.
    As they peeled around another corner, Claire saw the blurry neon lights of a convenience store in the rain. “Wait, stop!” she said.
    Gunner hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. He turned to her. “What?”
    “Ice cream,” she said, pointing at the store. Both Gunner and Jim looked at her, open-mouthed.
    “Ice cream?” Gunner asked incredulously, like he had misheard her.
    “Come on,” she said. “Unless you have a better idea, we’re getting ice cream and pain relievers. We’re going to need it.”
    “Comfort food and comfort pills, perfect,” Gunner said sarcastically.
    Claire laughed a little and threw open the car door. She didn’t wait for them, plunging into the rain and across the parking lot into the store.
    After grabbing three pints of ice cream, three plastic spoons, and a bottle of Advil, Claire threw some wadded dollar bills onto the counter without bothering to count them. She sprinted back to the car. Her mom had said that the growing pains usually started the night before your sixteenth birthday, but the wings grew in from midnight to dawn. They had a few hours before things were going to get bad, but she didn’t really trust anything her mom had told her. She had lied to them this long, how could Claire believe anything she said?
    She got back into the car and Gunner hit the gas, taking them through the wet, gleaming streets of the fancier Pearlton suburbs and veering up the hill to Lakewood Drive. He cut to the right and drove to the other side of the lake, where there were fewer houses, and turned into a little beach surrounded by big pine trees. The car crunched onto the gravel parking lot and Gunner stopped, still clutching the steering wheel.
    The lake glowed silver from the moon, and the wind skimmed the waves. The rain had faded to a drizzle,