Read Online Ever by Darrin Shade - Free Book Online

when I heard footsteps approaching.
    “Hey, it’s dark back here,” a girl giggled.
    “That’s the point, baby,” a boy responded.
    I pulled my arm through the hole and stuffed what felt like a small book under my shirt just as a young couple made their way to the wall.
    “Come on, baby, just a kiss, okay?”
    I recognized them. The boy was a Popular senior and the girl he was with was a Cheerleader. The last thing I needed was to witness their make-out session. I crawled to the nearest bookshelf and held my breath as they made their way to the exact spot I had just left. The unmistakable sounds of kissing ensued as I ran back into the main building to examine my find.
    The book was small and nondescript, with no illustrations on the cover. I flipped it open and saw that there were diagrams inside that looked hand-drawn. The title read, The Archive. The author’s name jumped out at me the moment it registered in my brain: Sylvia Maven.
    Sylvia.
    It couldn’t be a coincidence. I looked inside the book but there was nothing to indicate that the book belonged to the library. I shuffled to the front desk.
    “Can I help you?” the librarian, Ms. Ackerman, asked.
    “Um, yeah, I mean I—I hope so,” I stuttered.
    She tapped her pencil. “Well?”
    “Um, I want to check out this book but there’s no bar code on it.” I said, keeping Sylvia’s book hidden beneath the desk.
    “Oh, well sometimes books are donated to the library and they get onto the shelves without getting a bar code. It’s a mistake. Where is the book? I can get it assigned a code and then you can check it out.”
    “The book? Oh, I mean, I’m actually not sure where it is.” For some reason, I didn’t want anyone to see the book—not yet.
    Ms. Ackerman glared at me down her long pointed nose. “Young lady, are you trying to waste my time on purpose?”
    “No, ma’am!” I replied. “I mean, um, I was looking for a book on the back shelves, but um, there were some kids back there doing something…” I trailed off, feeling bad for throwing Popular Senior and Cheerleader under the bus, but they shouldn’t be making out in a public library, anyway.
    “Doing what, exactly?” Ms. Ackerman did not look pleased. Not at all. “Oh. My goodness.” She reached for the phone. “Security! Those kids are at it again.”
    While she was distracted, I fled, my contraband tucked firmly under my shirt.
    I couldn’t wait to get home to open the book so I sat in the library parking lot for a few minutes. Of course, there was no way to tell whether or not the author of The Archive was the same Sylvia as the one I had encountered in the Third Eye Book Shop, but the coincidence was just too much for me to ignore. There was no author’s photo in the book jacket. In fact, the book was more like a journal. There were sketches—mostly of gems, stones, trees and animals. Short descriptions accompanied each sketch.
    The main written section was titled, “The Attunements.” From what I gathered, you could perform rituals to enhance your senses. Traditionally, there were five senses. Yeah, I knew about those—sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The book said that there was a sixth sense, intuition. I scanned the chapter and saw that Artemis Vulgaris played a role in that attunement. I must have unwittingly cranked up my intuition. I read through each attunement and when I put the book down an hour later, my hands were shaking.
    She hadn’t called them attunements, but Gram had done these rituals with me when I was younger. All of them—except the one for intuition. I had done that one quite by accident.
     
    A female child must wait for the time when her cycle aligns with the full moon. On that day, three hours prior to dusk, she will anoint her dominant palm with the essence of vulgaris. Allow the light of the moon to bathe the palm. Sleep. When she awakens, she will have awakened her innermost power of Knowing.
     
    Holy crap.
    I thought back to the