Read Online Shadow's Dangers by Cindy Mezni - Free Book Online Page B

sometimes!”
    She didn’t have to blame herself for that. It was just a minor incident. It happened.
    “It’s nothing.”
    She gave me wide eyes, looking disapprovingly at me.
    “It’s not nothing,” she objected, furious against herself. “Look at you, you’re as white as death itself.”
    The blood left my face when I heard the old expression. Tess used to repeat it when I was a child. I was anemic and I constantly refused to take my treatment. I was always difficult when drugs came into play. That’s what Tess would say, telling me that I couldn’t go out if I stayed like this, because people would scream when they saw me, believing they were in front of a dead person. So I resigned myself each time to take my pills. Those memories overburdened me even more.
    “Deliah? Are you still with me?” Leighton worried at my lack of response.
    “Yes...”
    Past memories crowded my head. I wished I could get rid of them, if only for a little while. Unfortunately, I knew that it was impossible. I had to live with all those happy memories in a world that seemed alien, dull and uninteresting, now. Without Tess. Without my parents. With a sister who hated me. With no one I could confide everything I felt. Not even Hayden because there were some things she wasn’t able to understand, like my dreams and visions. But even if there were limits to her understanding, in my misery, I still considered myself lucky to have a friend like her, so loving and soothing when everything seemed to go wrong in my life.
    “You seem like you’re in bad shape.”
    I looked at Leighton, hating to be a concern for her.
    “You...”
    No sooner had she started her sentence when my sister opened the door of my room, without even having the decency to knock first. I felt a wave of irritation. It was my space, my haven, here, in this room. Her gaze scanned the room until she saw us, both sitting on the floor of my bathroom. Immediately, she honored us with her usual haughty sneer.
    “I think Deliah’s had enough visits for today,” she said in a sharp tone to Leighton.
    She didn’t even bother to be polite. Leighton gave me a disappointed pout then rose gracefully. She held out her hand to help me to my feet, help that I accepted. Then I noticed that she seemed deeply annoyed. A first. Leighton hugged me one last time and walked away. She told me before leaving the room:
    “Tomorrow morning, we’ll come get you. Be in front of your house at the same time as today. And prepare yourself to the idea that, starting tomorrow, it will be like that every day.”
    She looked at me with a radiant face before disappearing, satisfied, like she said it on purpose in front of my sister. As if she guessed that Annabelle wouldn’t like it, which was the case judging by the upset expression Annabelle wore. A kind of personal revenge for the appalling way my sister had received her. Revenge for me too, somehow. I smiled in my heart.
    The pleasure was short-lived because I suddenly realized what Leighton’s words really meant. Starting tomorrow, I was going to ride to school along with Leighton. Every morning I would find myself in the same car as the boy who gave me inexplicable crises. The same boy that left thinking I had a stupid crush on him, an idea that apparently revolted him. Not to mention the second brother I didn’t like any more than he liked me. Suffice it to say that I was afraid of what might happen again in the presence of the Wates tomorrow.

5
    Hasty Departure
    The weeks passed and each was similar to the one before. Always the same activities, always the same faces. And still, this eternal struggle against pain due to the loss of Tess, the acceptance of a routine without interest, and a future that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with. In short, always the same old song. In repeat mode.
    Morning and evening, I argued with Anna. She consistently did her best to get on my nerves. And more than ever before, she succeeded. We came to