Read Online Silent Alarm by Jennifer Banash - Free Book Online Page B

could count on, and before yesterday, I’d always thought that, in spite of the moods that made him snap at me suddenly, without warning, he felt the same way about me. A given. Now I’m not so sure.
    (—the gun, a sinuous black snake, Luke’s face blown apart by the blast. Unrecognizable. How long, exactly, had he been that way? A stranger—)
    â€œThat’s beside the point,” he says, turning back to the sheet of paper in front of him, the intricate doodles and shapes he scratches into the paper in black ink. His skin looks spookily translucent, or maybe it’s just the light, my exhaustion. Still, I have the unsettling feeling that if I touched him, my hand would sink right through his skin. “Shouldn’t you be practicing, anyway?” He smirks, his face twisted, but not exactly unkind. Not yet. “The great
virtuoso
? Surprised you even have time to come in here at all and bother with us little people.”
    I recoil, leaning back on my hands, suddenly unsteady. My brother had come to every performance and recital, had helped me with my application to the summer orchestral program, patiently correcting my grammar on the essay portion and driving me to the post office to mail it, watching, bemused, as I kissed the envelope for luck. The idea that he was
    (is)
    resentful of me, my playing, is ridiculous. Laughable. But the anger in his voice is unmistakable. A slow burn. A smoldering.
    He turns to look at me, the bookshelf behind his head shimmering through his skull, and I’m just about to answer him, the hurt coloring my face, the corners of my mouth turning down in anticipation of tears, when the doorbell rings, making me jump. I turn toward the door, startled, and when I turn back, he’s gone, the desk clear and empty. The air smells strange and heady, lilies mixed with the scent of burning paper, leaves maybe, the smell of something dry and dead and charred all the way to ashes. My heart is skipping out of beat, out of time, as I get up and run downstairs.

SIX
    My father is at the door before I can get to it. It could be the reporters, still, but at nine p.m. it’s a little late—even for them. He stands there, one finger pressed to his lips, his normally neatly combed dark hair standing on end, the temples graying more than I remember, still wearing the same bathrobe he sported this morning. His expression is frozen, that glazed-over look I’m sure is pasted all over my own face, what we are wearing these days instead of actual feelings. He looks out the peephole, and I watch as his body relaxes slightly, the tension draining from his face.
    â€œIt’s Delilah,” he says, unlocking the door.
    At the mention of her name, something dormant and still leaps up in my heart, and I motion frantically for him to move out of the way, fingers scrabbling at the nubby material of his robe.
    The door opens and she’s there, all five feet three inches of her, her black hair curling around her shoulders, blue eyes wide and startled and rimmed with red, her cheeks pink from the cold, the promise of snow on her clothes. She’s wearing a red sweatshirt and the pajama pants printed with martini glasses that I know she sleeps in every night, scuffed Ugg boots on her feet. This tells me that, most likely, she’s snuck out, that her parents don’t know she’s here, which is not a good sign. If she had to sneak out to come here, that means her parents don’t want her in my house. Or around me at all.
    â€œHey,” she says, coming toward me, arms open, and I fall into them, releasing the stress I’ve been bottling up all day, the fear that I’ll always be alone now, no friends, no one who will talk to me or even bestow a kind glance. It’s not as if I was so screamingly popular before the
    (shooting)
    Ben and Delilah were pretty much my whole world. But it was more than that. I didn’t like drawing attention to myself in any