How to Keep a Secret by Sarah Morgan

Author:Sarah Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2018-05-08T14:56:21+00:00

20

Mack

Rebellion: organized resistance or opposition

to an authority

Mack sat on the jetty in the marina with her arms looped round her knees. Her bike was propped against a wall in the harbor.

She didn’t even know what she was doing here. All she knew was that she didn’t want to spend another lonely weekend in the house trapped with her family. She couldn’t handle her own emotions, let alone theirs. It was like being caught in a flash flood. She couldn’t get her head above the surface to breathe. Something else had happened, although she had no idea what. She’d returned home from school a few days before to find her grandmother, her mother and her aunt huddled around the kitchen table. She couldn’t remember ever seeing them huddled before. It was clear she’d interrupted something big. She hadn’t hung around waiting for someone to tell her because no one in her family was big on confessions. Instead she’d grabbed milk from the fridge and gone straight to her room.

For once her mother hadn’t followed her. She’d told herself she was glad about that, but the truth was that she felt lonelier than she ever had in her life before.

Kennedy had ignored her since the incident on the beach, and because the other kids were terrified of Kennedy, they ignored her, too.

It didn’t matter so much during class, but at lunchtime she sat on her own at one of the lunch tables in the farthest corners of the cafeteria, wishing she could wind back time.

It felt as if every part of her life had gone wrong at the same time.

School was a nightmare. Home was a nightmare. She had no friends. No one to talk to. Which was why she was here now, on a Saturday morning, sitting on a dock that smelled of salt water and fish.

She missed her dad. Ed. She should be thinking of him as Ed. She missed their Saturday morning bike rides, their visits to the museums and the way he always managed to calm her mother down.

Mack felt desperately sad, and had no idea what to do with all the feelings inside her. And as for school—she had reinvented herself so many times in an attempt to be popular that she no longer knew who she was.

She saw Scott before he saw her. He walked with a loose, easy stride as if he was on the deck of a ship. His arms were loaded with bags and sailing gear and he was aiming for the big black inflatable boat moored right by her. Captain trotted alongside him, tail wagging.

Scott stopped when he saw her, but Captain bounded across and greeted her like a long-lost friend.

Mack buried her hands and face in his warm fur, grateful that at least someone loved her.

As she glanced up at Scott, her heart thumped a little harder.

She probably shouldn’t have come. Just because he’d helped her a couple of times didn’t mean he wanted her in his life.

It was like asking for rejection.

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