A Breath of Eyre by Eve Marie Mont Read Free Book Online Page B

the class erupt into fits of immature giggles. Michelle made some crude joke lamenting the length of Boswell’s Johnson, and I threw my pillow across the room at her. She responded by tossing her book at me. My hand darted up to shield my face.
    “Hey, I don’t want your Johnson, ” I said.
    “Get enough Johnson on your own?”
    “You’re disgusting,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. I tossed her book back to her and saw my necklace drop onto the bed. “Look, you broke my necklace.”
    “Here, give it to me and I’ll fix it,” she said, reaching across our beds. I handed the necklace to her, feeling naked without the weight of it on my chest. “The clasp is loose,” she said. “I’m gonna bend it back in place, but it should hold for a while. This is gorgeous, by the way.”
    “Thanks.”
    She held the dragonfly up to the light and inspected the markings. “Do you know what this pattern is?”
    “I think it might be Celtic or something. It was my mother’s. Her family came from Scotland.”
    She passed the necklace back to me. “You never told me what happened to your mom. How she died.”
    I refastened the necklace and let the pendant drop onto my chest. “She had a bad heart,” I said. “I was only eight when she died.”
    “That must have been hard. Losing your mom so young.”
    “Yeah, but in a way, I think it’d be worse to lose her now.” Michelle bristled, like she’d gotten a sudden chill. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t have to talk about this.”
    “No, it’s okay. I brought it up.” She picked up the photo of her mom from her dresser and brought it over to my bed. “You’ve probably wondered what’s with all my red clothes,” she said. I tried to pretend the thought had never crossed my mind. “Come on, don’t say you haven’t noticed. It’s weird, I know. It’s just, red was my mom’s favorite color. We buried her in her red riding jacket. So red is sort of like ... my talisman. When I’m wearing red, I feel like no harm can come to me. Like my mom’s protecting me. Does that sound stupid?”
    “No,” I said. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.”
    All this time, I’d been thinking Michelle was about science and reason, facts and figures, but there was a side to her that believed her mother was watching over her from beyond the grave. I had spent half my life feeling abnormal and broken, like I was missing some puzzle piece that made everyone else complete. But if someone as cynical as Michelle believed a red sweater could bring her closer to her mom, then maybe I could find my own way of reaching my mother. I tugged on my necklace and uttered a silent prayer to her, hoping I hadn’t waited too long to try and find her.

C HAPTER 4
    T he stables quickly became our go-to place to do homework or talk or just to get away from the girls in the dorm, since Elise and her twisted little cult had commandeered the lounge. Owen became a frequent visitor, and I began looking forward to seeing his face pop up over the loft ladder. His dimpled smile was so warm and sincere I found myself trying to be funny around him just so I could bear witness to its glamour.
    One day we were hanging out, Michelle doing math homework, me writing in my journal, and Owen messing around on his guitar, doing his best to distract us. He never seemed to have any schoolwork.
    “Emma?” he said, like he was about to ask me a favor. “Let me read something from your journal.”
    “Um, how about no?”
    “Come on. I’ve shown you some of the songs I wrote.”
    “That’s different.”
    “How is it different?”
    “It just is.”
    He stretched his lanky arms over his head and whined. “It’s such a tease to watch you scribbling away in that thing and not know what you’re writing about.”
    “It’s not as fascinating as you think,” I said. “In fact, it’s pretty awful.”
    “Don’t feel bad,” Michelle said. “She won’t show me either.”
    “I won’t show