What Scotland Taught Me by Molly Ringle

Author:Molly Ringle [Ringle, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, school, love, lie, cheat, scotland, oregon, high, britain, college, friendship, trip, friend, boyfriend
ISBN: 9781926760469
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Weary Four

“What did you do to her last night?” Laurence asked me, as I scrambled eggs in the kitchen before work.

“Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Ha ha.” He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms. “She did try to make out with me a few times. But she was obviously freaked out, so it couldn’t mean much.”

I glanced at him in surprise. He had never told me details like this before. Then distaste slid in, and I returned my focus to the eggs. Amber was beguiling him with common vulnerable-victim ploys that shouldn’t have worked on someone as smart as Laurence. “Did you let her?” I asked.

“A little. To calm her down.”

“Then what?” I flipped my eggs onto a plate.

“I spent the entire night telling her she wasn’t going to die, until at about five a.m. she finally fell asleep. Thanks so much for leaving her on my doorstep.”

“Your doorstep is where she wanted to be. We told her the same stuff, but maybe she’ll listen to you.” I reached past him for the salt and pepper.

“She needs to sleep more. And drink less. And see a psychiatrist. I mean, that date, come on. It’s my birthday.”

I paused. “February nineteenth. That’s right. I knew it sounded familiar.”

“Like I told her, it’s just her subconscious, or the spirits, reminding her to shop for me.”

“It makes sense. She’s obsessed with you. I’m probably not supposed to tell you, but I figured you noticed.”

“Everyone’s noticed.” He lowered his eyes. I couldn’t tell if this was modesty or dissatisfaction.

“Did she know it was your birthday?”

“Yep. Didn’t help. She said, ‘That just makes it more likely. We’ll go out to dinner, and we’ll get in a taxi crash. Or I’ll get food poisoning like Eva did, only it’ll be fatal.’” Laurence took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “I told her, ‘Then don’t throw me a party. We won’t do anything special. We’ll fast; we’ll stay home.’ She’s all, ‘If we stay here, there’ll be a fire. Or if nothing else, it’ll be the day I completely lose my mind.’ She thinks it’s destiny now.”

Amber corroborated this story when I next talked to her, which was that afternoon up in Room 17.

“I knew it was his birthday as soon as I saw it,” she said. “And I thought, dying or going insane on Laurence’s birthday--yes, that sounds likely enough, the way I feel about him.” She moaned and put her head on her knees. “Now all I want is him. And I want to go home and see Mom, but I couldn’t go unless he went with me.”

“You know, I was thinking about this,” I said. “You only saw one date, right? Not your date of birth.”

“Just February nineteenth.”

“So if you ask me, that isn’t a death thing at all. It’s just a date. If you’d seen ‘Amber Willock, 1989 to 2008,’ now that would look bad, but this? Who knows? Maybe it’s the date he’ll ask you to marry him or something.

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.