Read Online Struck by Jennifer Bosworth - Free Book Online Page A

Mr. Kale’s classroom before she showed up, I stayed in my seat, waiting for Jeremy to join the rest of the students so I wouldn’t have to pass by him again. But Jeremy remained seated, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His head was bowed, hands covering his face, and his whole body was trembling. I wondered if he was sick. He looked like he was having a seizure.
    Then a flicker of motion caught my eye. The door had opened, and Katrina stepped inside.
    I slumped lower in my desk, but there was no one for me to hide behind. The room had already started to clear out.
    Katrina saw me and smiled.
    Then a lot of things happened at once.
    Katrina stepped to Mr. Kale’s side. They leaned their heads together, and she whispered something to him. Hisusual stoic expression was replaced by one of unmasked surprise. Then both he and Katrina were staring at me as I sat frozen in my seat.
    Jeremy stopped shaking and abruptly rose to his feet, turning to me. As he did so a breeze pushed its way into the room, through the windows at my back, and my skin began to tingle, like my whole body had fallen asleep and was now waking up to thousands of tiny pinpricks.
    A storm.
    There was a storm coming.
    And Jeremy was walking straight toward me.

7
    “I NEED TO talk to you,” Jeremy said. From the grim tone of his voice, it sounded like he was about to tell me he’d run over my dog. Not that I had a dog.
    “One second.” I tore my eyes from Jeremy and about-faced in my seat, pressing my hands against the window-pane. I searched the hazy horizon line where the sky pressed against the Pacific. But there was not a breath of white in all that blue. If clouds were gathering, they were beyond my range of sight.
    Not if . Clouds were gathering somewhere. I could feel it. The storm would be here tomorrow. Maybe the day after that. I couldn’t say for sure, but I knew it was coming. Knew it in my warming blood and my tingling skin.
    I swiveled back around in my seat.
    Jeremy stood at the foot of my desk, gazing down at me. I swept my books into my bag and accordioned myself out of my seat. Over Jeremy’s shoulder I could see Katrina and Mr. Kale watching us. Katrina had hoisted herself up to sit on Mr. Kale’s desk, and was swinging her booted legs rhythmically.
    The rest of the students had cleared out, but Mr. Kale’sdoor was still open, and two more students walked in. Schiz and Quentin, from the cafeteria.
    “Kale, we might have a lead on—” Quentin began, but both he and Schiz froze when they saw me. “Never mind,” Quentin finished.
    “ I found her first,” Katrina said. “Me.”
    “No one’s giving out awards,” Schiz told her.
    “But if they were, I’d win.”
    “Let’s get out of here,” Jeremy said to me, keeping his voice low. “You don’t know me, Mia, but I need you to trust me. You do not want to get involved with these people. They’re dangerous.”
    He had me at Let’s get out of here .
    “Miss Price,” Mr. Kale said, “a word, please.”
    I don’t know why I did what I did next, but I did it. Call it lack of impulse control, or temporary insanity, or both.
    As I slid past him I grabbed Jeremy’s hand to pull him along after me.
    A wave of heat washed through me, starting in my hand and coursing up my arm, through my shoulders, boiling up my neck and into my brain.
    I had a moment to think, This can’t be good , before my mind went white. And then dark.
    And the dark stayed.
    And the heat stayed.
    And then I—
    — stood on the roof of a building, high, high above the ground. Out in the open air. The city spread out in patches of light far below .
    I was at the Tower .
    In the Waste .
    The wind charged at me suddenly, knocking me off my feet. I fell back, and my head turned up, and what I saw above me stopped my heart and then started it beating faster than ever. Faster than any heart has a right to beat .
    Black clouds filled the sky above my head, hanging so low I could reach up and skim my