Smash Into You by Crane Shelly

Author:Crane, Shelly [Crane, Shelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

When I came out, she was on the bed's edge, looking over the papers strewn out everywhere to see them better. Not only had I dyed my hair black, but I'd taken the clippers with the size two attached and took almost all of it off. Her mouth opened soundlessly.

I ran my hand along my head. "It's short."

"You look like a marine."

But she hadn't just said it, she breathed it. I quirked an amused brow. "Is that right?" She swallowed and nodded. "Let me guess—you've got a thing for marines?"

She shook her head and threw a shirt at me from the pile, laughing. "Shut up."

I sat opposite her and started looking around all the papers. "Find anything?"

"The thing is that I don’t even know what I'm looking for. I could be looking at something really important right in the face and not see it for what it is."

She scattered them around in a frenzy and laughed. "All these wasted trees. You know…" She stopped for a long time, collecting herself. I waited and watched as the emotions played over her face. The light from the lamp in the corner was dim, only lighting half of her face. Finally she spoke again, smiling softly. "I don't have many memories of my mom at all. I was only three when she left me, but there's this one memory of us. We were sitting under this big willow tree. It was massive, or maybe it just looked that way because I was so small. I don't remember what we talked about or anything, I just remember lying under it, watching the branches above us. It felt like something we did all the time. Willow trees have always been my favorite because of that. Even though she left me, I just can't let go of that tree."

She looked up at me, strangely shy. "Is that silly?"

"Of course not. And we're going to prove that your mom didn't dump you because she didn't want you. I just know it."

"Please," I heard her whisper as she started looking at papers again.

I turned some of the papers to face me, with renewed vigor. I found BioGene's company financials, since they obviously were a publicly traded company, all the names of their CEOs and head this and head that. Then all the info on their not-for-profit side. The scientific research side.

It was supposed to sound so on the up-and-up, which made it sound so shady.

We read over everything for hours, changing positions, her lying on the bed, me in the chair, her Indian style on the floor, me leaning on the back wall. My shoulder was aching from all the stretching from dyeing my hair. I rolled my shoulders and focused in on the paper again.

It was all these random names and dates. They were labeled "Project 23". But there were more than twenty-three names and the dates didn't match that either, so it must have been some name they chose for whatever this was. There were pages of them as I counted along…and then there she was.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.