Read Online Torn (Cold Awakening) by Robin Wasserman - Free Book Online Page B

looked like the kind of av you build yourself when you’re getting started on the network, designing a zone with all the features of the fantasy world in your head, making up for the increasing drabness of real life. Like this was a game.
Tonight, seven p.m.
The puppy-lizard chirped, in a songbird voice,
“I’ll be the strikingly handsome fellow with the charming smile.”
    And
I’ll
be sick,
I thought.
    But I knew I would go.
    I had never been there at night, and I’d never been there without Riley. Without him, without the sun glinting off the glass spiresand shimmering on the water, without the crowds of orgs pretending to mourn, it felt like somewhere else. Somewhere new.
    I scaled the fence that separated the tourist area from the wilderness, and padded softly down to the water. There was no reason to think that Jude would meet me at the same spot I always met Riley, but it was about a mile out from the Windows of Memory, a mile from “human suffering.” So that’s where I would begin. I’d had visions of Jude laying an ambush for me, emerging from the water like some kind of mutant swamp monster, just to hear me scream. If he was hiding, he’d hidden himself well; the coastline was deserted.
    It was too dark to see the horizon. The ocean stretched into sky, and standing on the edge of it was like looking over a cliff into nothingness. I imagined what it would be like, wading into the dark water and floating above the silent city of death, with its frozen cars and grinning corpses. Floating away into the vast nothing.
    I’d never been one to fear monsters crawling out of the dark—but I couldn’t turn my back on the lapping waves. I edged backward up the shore.
    And bumped right into him.
    So he got to hear me scream after all.
    I whirled around. “What the hell are you trying to—
Riley?
”
    “Hey.” He didn’t look surprised to see me. “Did I scare you?”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Uh, you told me to meet you here?”
    “I did?”
    “You didn’t?”
    “Tell me exactly what ‘I’ said.”
    “You told me to pick you up here, and then gave me some coordinates to program into the car for wherever we’re going next. You said it was a surprise.”
    “That didn’t seem kind of … weird?”
    Riley shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured it was some kind of romantic … something. A girl thing.”
    “Girl thing?” I gave him a light smack on the shoulder. “Remind me to explain to you why you’re never saying that again.” I was stalling. Thinking. Waiting for him to see the obvious.
    “Wait, if you didn’t send that message, then what are you doing here?” he finally asked. “And who were you waiting for?”
    “Jude,” I admitted. The best lies start with a kernel of truth. “I got an anonymous message to meet here. I figured, who else would want to mess with me like that?”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Why didn’t I? “I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
    “Too late.” He grinned, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to spot a wagging tail poking out of his jeans.
    “I can see that.”
    “I knew he’d show up eventually,” Riley said.
    “Yeah. Can’t keep the Three Musketeers apart for long.” He was too excited to notice my tone. “Let’s go,” I added, eager to get out of our place before the specter of Jude spoiled it for good.
    • • •
    The car drove us away from the memorial, away from my house and BioMax and anything even remotely resembling civilization. It navigated over increasingly bumpy roads and unpaved gravel until, finally, we had to override the automatic controls and drive manually. Riley took the wheel while I called out the turns, using my ViM to map the coordinates because the car refused to help. It felt like the Dark Ages. Which was appropriate because, it soon became apparent, that’s exactly where we were headed.
    In the end, three hours out, there were no more roads. Not official ones, at least. Nothing but weed-ridden