Flipping by R. Lee Fryar

Author:R. Lee Fryar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781648982095
Publisher: City Owl Press

“Charley—” Austin’s eyes, huge and stricken, gazed down on me, split open and hemorrhaging gray, milky energy. I needed to get to the graveyard, now. Maybe it wasn’t too late. I crawled across the floor on my elbows, the ends of my tattered essence curling up, burning, either from the acid of my damaged spirit or the heat of Levi’s passage through me.

Insult to injury—Ms. Edie stepped right in the middle of my back.

“What happened?” she said, helping Austin up. “I told you not to be up on that ladder without Walter. What were you thinking?”

Austin pulled away from her. “Charley!” He threw his arm out and slapped it right through my foot.

He couldn’t physically stop me. I could’ve kept on going, slid or rolled down the stairs, screaming all the way, but I didn’t move. The constant thud of his heart through my essence beat a rhythm over and over. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“For what? For tearing up my room? For tearing my family apart? For destroying me?” Anger roared through my soul—I wanted to hit him. But I didn’t.

“I’m all right,” Austin said to Ms. Edie.

Alice appeared, bending over me. “What happened?”

“Levi—find Levi!” I snapped.

“Robert!” Alice called.

Jeff popped right through the wall. Late as usual. The crash must have been half an hour ago. Or a minute. I’d lost track of time, of myself.

“Your bond—why did you leave the graveyard—Charley?” Jeff exclaimed.

“I’ve got to get back there—I can’t walk—"

Austin bent over me. “I’ll help.”

“You can’t help me,” I snarled.

“But you helped me when I was hurt,” he said. “You helped me walk to my room.”

“That was different.”

“Then tell me what to do,” he said, desperation building in his voice.

“Austin? Who are you talking to?” Ms. Edie must have thought he’d hit his head and was showing his concussion by talking to a bare spot on the floor.

“No one. I’m all right,” he repeated. He pushed his hands through me, around me, getting nowhere.

“You can’t. Just—leave me alone.”

He shook his head. “Not a chance.” A curiously determined expression appeared on his face, like he was concentrating, and then he shoved his arms underneath me and lifted. Fragments of my body floated around me like rags as he pulled me against his chest. I slipped half into it, right into his beating heart, heaving lungs, the rich, deep, musky smell of him.

He squared up to the shell-shocked Alice. “Where do I need to take him?”

“Follow me,” she said, enunciating, as if her lips hadn’t moved in centuries. She led the way down the hall while Jeff kept pace.

“Austin?” Poor Ms. Edie. The look on her face made me sure she’d be calling Walter and telling him his partner had completely lost it.

“It’s okay,” Austin said, getting his crutch under him and limping forward.

“Where are you going?”

“The cemetery. Don’t call Walter!”

Ms. Edie’s mouth opened in a perfect circle. But she didn’t say anything else. She didn’t try to stop us.

Austin limped down the stairs and across the road, into the cemetery, following Alice.

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