Delirium (Book 2) by Dee Shulman

Author:Dee Shulman [Dee Shulman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141392190
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2013-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

I’d like to meet you today. Name a good place and time.

Damn. Probably if Seth had been there I would have asked his advice. But he had gone to pick us up some breakfast. I sat on the side of my bed, wondering what to do. In the end I decided there was only one option: ignore it.

At 4 p.m. I got a second text:

Alternatively I could meet you there? I am sure your head-

master, Dr Crispin, would be accommodating.

Oh God. He’d found out where I lived. This so wasn’t going to blow over. I thought about my evening schedule. Seth would be running until about 6 p.m. Dinner was at 6.30 and I had a physics lecture at 7 p.m. Which meant if it was going to be today – and it didn’t look like I had a lot of choice – it would have to be soon.

I punched his number. He picked up after one ring.

‘Eva, I’m glad you phoned.’

‘There’s a Starbucks a block away from the school. I could meet you there in twenty minutes.’

‘Make it thirty,’ he said, and hung up.

Half an hour was better. It meant I could do my daily check-in with Rose before I left. I just caught her on her way to drop off a prescription, but she didn’t seem to mind the delay too much. Temperature, normal; blood pressure, OKish; pulse –

‘It’s racing, Eva. Is everything OK?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ I lied.

She narrowed her eyes at me and said, ‘Drop by this evening – after the lecture. I want to double-check you then.’

I sighed. ‘Rose – I honestly don’t –’

‘Eva, either you drop by later, or you move back in. Your call.’

‘OK, OK! I’ll see you later, Rose,’ I said in my ultra-sweet voice.

‘Good. I’ll look forward to it. Oh – and enjoy the lecture. What’s it on?’

‘Dark Matter,’ I said, a little frisson of excitement worming its way through the thick layer of anxiety. ‘We’ve got an astrophysicist coming from Minnesota. It’s going to be awesome.’

I was about to tell her about his work on quantifying dark-matter particles, when I caught sight of the clock. I only had five minutes to get to Starbucks. Running had been out of the question for months. Even walking that distance was a challenge. Which meant that by the time I arrived there it was 4.39 and Nick Mullard was already seated and looking at his watch.

I didn’t expect him to recognize me. Apart from the gig, which he probably wouldn’t remember, he’d seen me in Theo’s office for, like, thirty seconds.

But his eyes widened as soon as he saw me. ‘God, it’s you!’ he breathed.

I dropped into the chair opposite him. The walk had just about finished me.

‘Are you OK?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t look so good.’

I nodded, and pressed my hands into my lap. They were shaking. Along with my legs.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked.

I wasn’t sure if I could trust my hands not to slop a drink, but I was thirsty.

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.