Fireside - Lakeshore Chronicles 05 by Susan Wiggs

Author:Susan Wiggs
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-02-08T20:09:39+00:00

Thirteen

Julian Gastineaux scooted over to make room for the dark-haired kid. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s not taken.”

The kid sat down, holding his backpack in his lap.

Julian turned to stare out the train window. There was nothing to see. Daisy was long gone. Still, he could picture her perfectly in his mind, could even smell her hair.

He should have kissed her goodbye. He wished he had.

And this, of course, was the essence of his relationship with Daisy Bellamy, and had been ever since he’d first laid eyes on her one summer. Their relationship seemed, sometimes, to be made up of a series of goodbyes. Awkward ones. He spent a lot of time looking back over his shoulder, wishing he’d done something, or said something, instead of just letting her go.

When it came to Daisy, he had no sense. He was all heart and no head. So many times over the past few years, he wished his damn heart would just tell him to walk away…and stay away. His life would be a whole lot simpler if he’d surrender to circumstances. But of course, where Daisy and Julian were concerned, nothing was simple.

Stretching his long legs until his feet slid under the seat in front of him, he took out a battered paperback novel and folded it back on itself, grateful in a way for the long ride into the city. Enforced downtime. It was a rare thing in Julian’s life. Making the grade at Cornell, especially in his chosen major—Engineering and Applied Physics—took everything he had. And on top of that, he was in the ROTC for the Air Force, so he could afford the degree that was sucking his life dry. The reserve officer training for the Air Force was a huge commitment, but not as huge as the tuition bills for an Ivy League college. Some people thought he was out of his gourd, signing up for the military. But the the military had a concrete plan, something he’d lacked all his life. There was a certain satisfaction in knowing exactly what was expected of him.

Besides, when he considered the alternatives, there was no question that he was doing the right thing. If he hadn’t worked his butt off to get into college, he’d be in some greasy spoon in a no-name suburb in Southern California, wearing a disposable paper hat at work instead of a parachute pack.

Daisy was scared for him on this J-term training mission. She knew he was going to practice, among other things, how to jump out of an airplane at 20,000 feet, and survive.

And of all the things the ROTC demanded of him, all the mental and physical challenges—the early-morning wakeup calls, punishing endurance training and numbing drills—this was surely the coolest.

The kid next to Julian shifted restlessly in his seat. Julian could tell he was anxious about something. No, scared. That was what Julian sensed, and he grew mildly curious. The boy exuded a kind of toughness most people would find off-putting. Not Julian.

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