The Finder by Kate Hendrick

Author:Kate Hendrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2018-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

23

My first night in the house wasn’t great. The bare wooden boards were hard, no matter how many of my spare clothes I spread out beneath me. It wasn’t the hottest night but the house was stuffy and I’d worked up a sweat walking from where Elias had dropped me at the top of our driveway. For a second I’d considered just going home, but the thought of facing Mum was enough to motivate me.

I tossed and turned for most of the night, just ending up a stiff, sweaty mess tangled in my dirty clothes. There were no curtains on the window so I woke up just past six with glaring sunlight filling the room.

Still half-asleep, I shuffled my makeshift bedding out into the corridor and shut the bedroom door behind me, blocking most of the light and heat.

It was nearly midday when I woke up again, and I was starving. I’d forgotten to bring any of Aurora’s mangoes or Cherry Ripe slice from Elias’ house, so I had no food. And I didn’t have my toothbrush. If I could have snapped my fingers and magically been back at home with running hot water and a full breakfast spread, I wouldn’t have hesitated a second.

‘Toughen up, princess,’ I muttered to myself. Vogue had sailed through five days in the house and I was cracking it after one.

I checked my phone. I’d switched it off completely while I was with Elias, figuring he was the only one that normally used it to contact me. When I’d arrived back at the house I’d turned it back on and found a single message from Mum. Brisk: six words.

I assume you are okay somewhere?

My response was in the same vein—a simple Yep—and the phone went off again. If it wasn’t for my history—if I wasn’t Lindsay, the Left Behind—I would have just ignored it. But even I couldn’t be that cruel.

I washed my face in the bathroom—peppermint green everywhere—and tried to do something with my hair, then kicked my stuff into a pile and sat down to ponder my options.

Elias had a morning shift at work and then an afternoon class at uni. I had a vague memory of promising I’d do some research tracking down the names Aurora had given us and then meet him after school somewhere. And now I’d slept half the day away.

I locked the house up, tucking the key into my pocket after a moment’s hesitation, and started the trek to the library. And my mind went to Elias, wondering with a sick, panicky feeling what on earth had possessed me to tell him all that stuff. I’d talked for hours. All the stupid little things that had seemed so important, things that only Frankie and I knew. Why had I told him? He’d totally suckered me.

I doubled my pace as I neared the library, despite the heat, because thinking about Elias wasn’t helping anything anyway. I went straight in, not pausing to appreciate the air conditioning, bee-lining for the computers.

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