Read Online The Shifter's Choice by Jenna Kernan - Free Book Online

understand.”
    He lifted the pad of paper and wrote while she sipped her lemonade. “Everyone here is trying to find a cure for me to change back.”
    She lifted her head and gaped at him. “Is that possible?”
    He nodded and then shrugged.
    She continued reading. “But fence is not to keep me in but to keep intruders out.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    He lifted his hands in exasperation as if to say I can’t help you with that. Then signed,
Finish
.
    “What’s finished?”
    Lesson. Today. Finish.
    “We still have thirty minutes.”
    He signed,
Walk you down. Need meet woman
.
    She didn’t understand but agreed. “All right.”
    He waited by a trailhead that she had not noticed in her first and only excursion into the dense undergrowth.
    “We aren’t taking the road?”
    Long,
he signed.
Two many long
.
    She wasn’t sure if he meant it was too long to walk the road or if he meant that it was twice the time to walk the road. Either way she was dubious about stepping into the jungle again. Most of the trails she had taken in her life had sidewalks and street lights.
    “Is it safe?” she asked.
    With me. Safe. Yes. Come.
    She nodded her acceptance. “You’re not going to ditch me in there, are you?”
    He frowned and looked disappointed in her again. It was a look she was getting used to.
    “Okay, I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to trust people,” she signed.
    She motioned to the green wall of ferns and palms and a multitude of plants and trees she didn’t know the names of. “Okay. Let’s go.”
    Lam hesitated and her stomach tightened. He got that look when he was preparing to drill particularly deep into her past and if he went there she knew he’d hit a nerve, so she just started walking, somehow finding the trail. The path angled down sharply and she had to lean back to keep from falling. Lam nudged past her, taking point. The jungle here seemed a perpetual twilight because the bright sun never found the forest floor. She could hear water dripping from the leaves about her and occasionally was hit with a large droplet. The birdsong filled the air but she also detected an occasional worrisome rustling in the undergrowth. Johnny turned his head often to check on her. The sound of water began to increase, gradually drowning out her plodding steps and the birds.
    Lam followed the switchbacks so they zigzagged in manageable steps down the embankment that she nearly tumbled down. When the trail leveled off it also branched. Lam pointed to their left and made a swimming motion, sweeping his arms in graceful circles. She heard that waterfall again. The one she’d glimpsed from an inverted position. The hairs on her neck stood up.
    “You swim there?”
    He nodded.
    “I don’t swim.”
    A-F-R-A-I-D.
His fingers spelled the letters perfectly.
    “Yes. I sure am.”
    Of water?
    “Of drowning.”
    I teach you,
he signed.
    “No thanks. I’d rather fall down the hill again.”
    He shrugged and headed along the main trail. It didn’t stay level for long. As she walked she tried to imagine Lam teaching her to swim. He’d probably just throw her in the deep end and see what happened. Swimming seemed to be a big form of recreation on this island, which only made sense. She hadn’t had a leave day yet, though Zeno kept pestering her about going to the beach which she might enjoy, but not with him. She imagined she’d go to the shore alone, lie on a towel and when she got too hot just wade into the surf to her knees and splash water on herself as she used to do all those years ago at Orchard Beach in the Bronx. What would it be like to dive into the waves?
    Terrifying, she decided. Like slipping from her mother’s arms at the pool and just making it to the edge. Mom laughing, clapping, drunk. She shivered. But the swimmers on the Long Island Sound seemed so happy.
    Sonia was so busy imagining herself diving into an oncoming wave that she didn’t see Johnny stop and so, when he did, she bounced off his