Playing Keira by Jennifer Castle

Author:Jennifer Castle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT

ONE

Sometimes, I hit pause at a random moment when I’m on film and stare at my eyes, and try to figure out why they chose me.

With the others, it’s obvious. Rory says those accidentally hilarious things, and Felix keeps bursting into song. Keira reads an advanced-level social studies textbook aloud. Then there’s Nate, with that whole Johnny Appleseed vibe. Maybe I was picked because my favorite answer to their questions was “Grrrr,” or because I wore pajamas to school three days in a row, or simply because they needed a girl with brown hair. It could have been all of these things, or none of them. So I search those eyes, those eyes I once saw the world through, and remind myself they’re the same ones I see it through now. But in all the searching, I’ve never found the spark that says, Watch this one.

I’m guessing Ian Reid didn’t find it either, and this is why he dumped me.

“You’re awesome, Justine,” he said as we sat in his vintage Jeep, not going inside to the party we were supposed to be going inside to. “But I feel like we’re better off as friends.”

Translated, I’m pretty sure that means: The thought of kissing you—or touching you at all, really—makes me want to hurl, and when you look at me with love you resemble a chipmunk.

My heart doubled over from the punch, hacked a bit, then fell to the floor of its little heart studio apartment.

But on the outside, I just nodded and spun out words like okay and fine and cool. That was before Christmas and now it’s March, and there isn’t a single hour when I’m not thinking about the fact that for seven weeks I had someone, and then I didn’t, and how that works exactly.

This hour, I’m pondering it while sitting on a low stone wall outside the town library. It’s snowing again, falling in bite-size chunks so fluffy they look fake. I’ve got an overdue copy of The Graduate on DVD tucked inside my parka and I’ll go in and return it, eventually. Well, yes, the stone is cold down there. Very, in fact. But this is so peaceful, with my mother at the supermarket and thus out of nagging range, and I love the way Main Street looks before the plows come through. The air feels eerie-hushed, and above me, everything is colorless, a striking shade of utter blank.

In the distance to the west, I can see our town’s mountains. They’re not normal mountains with peaks. They’re ridge mountains, low and wide and gracefully deformed. You know they’re beautiful but have no idea why. On top of one is a stone tower visible from miles away with windows that look like eyes, and if you stare at it long enough, it always seems to be staring back.

I imagine that Ian is here, perched on the wall beside me, with his arm around my waist, his chin on my shoulder, and this time I don’t care how we look or that some idiot might yell, “Get a room!” No, wait.

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