Read Online Core by Teshelle Combs - Free Book Online Page A

change my mind?”
    Cale grinned. “Can I tell everyone?” He looked at the clock over his bed. “It’s almost noon. They should be awake by now. And I’m starving.”
    Ava gasped. “Noon? It can’t be that late already.”
    “Reds like to sleep in,” he said with a shrug. “Why? Are you late to something?”
    “I have to go,” she said, jumping over him. She took the stairs three at a time and yelled back at him, “I’ll call you later.”
    Cale tried not to double over at the feeling of her being gone. It was almost cruel, like half of him had been stripped away by a giant Band-Aid.   Stop being such a baby,  he told himself.  She’ll be fine without you. You’ll be fine without her. It’s just for a little while.
    ***
    Ava’s hands were gripping the wheel to Miriam’s sedan so tightly she was hurting herself. She pulled into the driveway behind Jim’s silver Mercedes and fought the urge to ram into its bumper.
    She sat in the car for a moment, gathering her thoughts, trying to plan out what she would do if Jim hadn’t waited for her to get home before he let his colors show. She already knew she’d do something bad. She’d been planning for it her whole life. Just in case of a day like this.
    Because she thought his voice would calm her down, because she felt like she hadn’t seen him in hours, because…she picked up her phone and dialed his number.
    “Ava. What’s up?” Cale asked like they talked all the time.
    “I don’t know why I called you–”
    Cale’s next words were sharp. “Where are you? I’m coming.”
    “Cale, no, you don’t need to come. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
    “Liar. Why are you calling me if everything’s fine?”
    “To say hi. See how you’re doing.” The lies came out quick and easy. “Did you tell everyone yet?”
    “Tell me what’s going on or I’m driving to your house, Ava.”
    She sighed and pressed the phone even closer to her face, like she was sharing a secret, a secret she’d been keeping her whole life. She hadn’t talked about it with anyone. Not with Walter, not with T, not with her case workers.  So  why am I talking to him about it?  Somehow, she felt unusually comfortable on the other end of the phone.
      “It’s just sometimes my foster father can get…aggressive.”
    “Aggressive?”
    “And we sort of wrecked the house last night with the sirens and all that. Plus, I took Miriam’s car without asking him. He’s going to be pissed. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
    “Are you in the house right now?” His voice sounded strained, tight.
    “No, I’m still in the driveway.”
    “Good. Stay where you are. I’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”
    “Cale–” But he hung up on her.
    She huffed at her silent phone.   I can handle this myself.
    She got out of the car, about to walk around to the window when she noticed the fro nt door was ajar. She pushed and it swung open without a sound. Ava forgot that the lock had been smashed the night before. Again, she wondered why the alarm never went off, but she buried it.  No time for curiosity . Instead she crept upstairs and opened her bedroom door, where she suspected Miriam was hiding since she could hear Jim clanking around in their bedroom.
    Miriam was sitting on Ava’s bed, going through an old photo album. Ava knew without looking that it was the scrapbook Miriam had made when Ava first came to live with them. Ava was four years old in all the pictures, her poofy hair braided in pigtails. She couldn’t box then, she remembered, but God, could she could lie. Her teachers, her neighbors, her foster mother all bought her soppy-eyed stories. Falling down the stairs, climbing trees, slipping in the bathtub. Each bruise its own story.
    “Ava? I was so worried,” Miriam dropped the scrapbook and ran to her, but Ava stopped her by raising a hand. She look ed at her foster mother from a distance. The gray and red mark spread from Miriam’s eye to her