Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby

Author:Jennifer Sommersby [Sommersby, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-04T18:21:06+00:00

“What is this?” I said, lifting my head to look into the man’s face.

But he was already walking away, his black trench coat disappearing into the trees.

“Keep it close.” His voice drifted into my head, the way Alicia’s had done that day in Henry’s car, the way the littlest shade had begged for my help. He then vanished from sight.

:36:

The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.

—Rene Descartes

I must’ve dozed off again because my eyes were forced open when I began to throw up. Whiskey wil do that to you, especialy if you’re not a drinker to begin with and your body is ravaged with a lack of food and too much adrenaline. The morning had given me a surplus of the latter, and combining it with the alcohol zipping through my veins didn’t make me feel any better. It didn’t exorcise the demons or bring Marlene back from the brink. It just made everything worse.

Leaning over the side of the table, I retched until my gut was cleaned out. My teeth were fuzzy, my mouth dry as sand, head pounding, eyes on fire from a late afternoon sun turned onto its highest setting. A couple of cars were now in the park’s lot, though no one had approached me. Even if they had, I’d been too out of it to know any better.

I struggled to sit up, the spinning world bringing around a new bout of nausea. I realy needed to move, though, before someone did take notice of the teenager sprawled on a city park picnic table, an emptied bottle of Jack Daniels dropped onto the bench.

Moving was way harder than sitting, and I didn’t have a clear direction as to where I should go. I contemplated turning on my phone again, caling Uncle Ted for a rescue, but I wasn’t ready to face them. Not yet. I didn’t want to talk about Auntie, didn’t want to hear that she was dead, didn’t want them fawning over me,

“poor little Gemma.” Didn’t want Henry’s warm arm around me, teling me everything was going to be al right when nothing was ever going to be al right again. I shuffled toward the sidewalk and headed out of town, beyond where the sidewalk ended, away from Eaglefern’s excuse for a downtown core.

As I moved along the road, it narrowed into two lanes, nothing but a tight gravel shoulder and swampy ditch to show me the way. I stripped off my jacket and tied it around my waist, partly because I was hot, partly because it smeled like puke. The false sensation of timelessness granted space to think, even in the hazy space that was my brain, to inspect the newness of my circumstances and consider where I fit in the bigger picture.

I’d never been one to fantasize about the milestones most people count on in their lives, of love, marriage, children, the happily-ever-after. How could I, with

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.