Shadowlands by Kate Brian

Author:Kate Brian
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction - Young Adult
Publisher: Disney
Published: 2013-01-08T06:00:00+00:00

My thigh muscles were on fire, and my calves were cramping. There was a blister forming on the side of my big toe, and sweat soaked the back of my gray T-shirt. My lungs burned, my eyes watered, and my neck itched whenever my hair brushed against it.

I was in heaven. Why had I waited so long to do this?

As I came around a bend in the trail, the top of the bluff loomed into view. For the first mile, Olive had kept pace with me, panting at my side. After that, she’d dropped back, and now there was nothing but the crashing surf and whipping wind. I hoped she was okay, because I was not about to stop. This was way too much fun. Imagining the finish line up ahead, I turned on the heat and pushed myself into a sprint for the last incline. As soon as I reached the top, I let out a triumphant, euphoric laugh. I slowed my steps to a walk and held my fingers to my neck to check my pulse.

Perfect. Everything, at this moment, was perfect. I decided to relish it. Relish the sun on my face, the clean air whooshing in and out of my lungs, that lovely floral scent all around me. I wasn’t going to think about the weird gray house or the scrap of fabric or the whispers, the laughing, or the humming. I wasn’t even going to ponder the fact that Darcy had refused to take me seriously last night, or that my dad hadn’t come out of his room this morning. I was just going to stand here and breathe.

Just beneath me on the hill was a small outcropping with a pretty white gazebo at its center, and farther below I could see the roof of our house on Magnolia Street. Beyond that, the ocean went on forever. I reached my arms over my head and stretched.

My mother would have loved this place. She lived for the beach, for quaint little shopping towns. The gardens here would have had her falling over with envy, and I could just imagine her peppering the locals with questions about how they got their tulips to bloom so late in the season and whether her roses needed more or less pruning. I felt a pang of sadness, wishing she were here in this place that seemed tailor-made for her, and did my best to brush it aside. Those pangs were part of my life now—they would be forever—and while I sometimes let myself wallow in them, this was not one of those times. Not when I was trying to appreciate the perfect.

To my left, a thin, paved walkway cut into the grass, which eventually broke off in two directions. One led right to the big blue house Darcy had noticed yesterday, the other toward the street where it turned into a wide sidewalk. I walked over to a bench situated right at the fork in the path and set myself up behind it for a calf stretch while I waited for Olive.

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