Read Online Charcoal Tears by Jane Washington - Free Book Online

reached out to the railing, but then twitched his hand higher, yanking a small frame from the wall and throwing it. Caught by surprise, I didn’t block the frame that smacked into my collarbone and he laughed derisively as he retreated. I fell back, rubbing at the spot on my chest. I could feel the bruise already.
    The frame was on the ground, broken now, and I glanced down at the smiling faces as I picked it up. I had stopped actually looking at the sparse photos that littered our house—they were remnants of a past life, of different people. The family that had lived here before ours; admittedly, a family with our names and our appearances… but a different family all the same. The previous Seraph Black met my stare now, a crack fissuring ominously across her throat, a web of broken glass mottling the previous Tariq Black’s blissfully young face. Maryanne Black stood aside in the picture, somehow managing to escape the carnage of ruptured glass, simply by setting herself apart from the other occupants of the frame. She had serious green eyes and a generous mouth, set into a generously dishonest curve. Dimly, I wondered if she smiled the same painful smile in the other pictures around the house… but I didn’t have the heart to check.
    I shoved the broken frame into a draw and headed back to the kitchen. My father’s keys were on the side table next to the front door and I switched his front door key before heading outside to the garage. I unlocked it and left it open, sure that my father was going to pass out for the rest of the night. He never usually dared to show his face again after I reminded him my ‘little magic trick’. I had done it the first time when I was thirteen. Spurred on by the sudden urge to shove him, I had somehow managed to electrocute him instead. He’d been fried. He peed himself, and Tariq had helped to lock him in the room while he was knocked out. He said nothing about it the next day, but we gained a very valuable weapon.
    I surrounded myself with my colours and began to work on the painting I had started the day before. The second coat was easier, but I still took my time with it. As the sky darkened, I hit the light and continued to work, losing myself in the soft pastel colours and the emerging face that stared back at me. Just like the picture that Gerald had thrown at me, this painting tried to reflect a familiar face back to me, but I had changed it too much for it to be an honest portrayal. The eyes were mismatched, one a blue-green and the other a blue-violet. It was hard for people to meet my eyes, which was why I so often stared at the ground. The nose was small and narrow, tipped up a little bit at the end. The lips were soft and bow-shaped, a light pink. The jaw was angled but delicate, giving an exotic shape to what should have been a clenched jaw. The cheekbones were high and sloping, the eyebrows softly arched instead of pulled together in a frown. The curl of the hair was fat and lazy, the colour dark as night. It was me, but it wasn’t me. This girl was free. I had painted the pain right out of her eyes. I had brushed the smile onto her lips, the ease into the set of her jaw. Her skin was unmarked, unbruised.
    She wasn’t me.
    A sound broke through my reverie and I jumped away from the painting, looking out to the entrance of the garage.
    “We were dropping off Tariq,” Noah said, stepping into the garage.
    Cabe followed him, his eyes taking in the space. “He said you’d be here.”
    I snapped my mouth shut and moved to cover my painting, but Noah caught my hand just in time. I tried to yank it back and he looped an arm around me, pulling me clear out of the way. This caught Cabe’s interest, and he stepped up to look too.
    “What…” he breathed, stepping in closer.
    Noah tensed behind me, his short gasp stirring against my hair.
     
     

4

     
    The Oddities of the Ordinary
     
     
    Noah’s arms slackened around me and he stepped up closer to the painting,