A Million Miles Away by Lara Avery Read Free Book Online Page A

returned home from Davis’s room in the early morning, still dark, her thoughts slow and cold. She shed her wedges and coat inside the door and made her way sleepily upstairs, not bothering to mute her footfalls. If her parents weren’t completely knocked out, they were some version of half-asleep, at least.
    She went straight for the sink in the bathroom, splashing hot water on her face and hands, and with a dollop of remover, she cleared her face of foundation, her eyes of liner and mascara, her lips of gloss.
    On her way to her bedroom, she paused in the hall, listening. A cheerful, beeping sound was emanating through a crack in Michelle’s door. Kelsey peeked in.
    Still open from her last visit, Michelle’s laptop had rewoken, the blue light from its screen bathing her desk. Michelle. It was a wild thought, too fast and strange to be real, as if she were a kid again, believing in ghosts.
    Without bothering to turn on the light, Kelsey slipped into Michelle’s chair, found the green phone icon with the cursor, and clicked ANSWER .
    Peter filled her screen clearly this time, no glitches. But he looked tired. Hollow.
    “Michelle,” he said, breathing in and out as though he was sinking into a hot bath. “Michelle.”
    “Hi,” she replied, and a smile grew on his face.
    Kelsey couldn’t get the words out just yet. What would she say first? Michelle died. Or she could start with, I’m Kelsey, and go from there. She should ease into it.
    “Why weren’t you on last night? Did you not get my email?”
    Kelsey opened her mouth. I wasn’t on because… No. Michelle wasn’t on because… No, that wouldn’t work, either. Her thoughts were all mixed up.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “You can’t do that to me. I was worried you’d started dating someone else or something.” Peter looked around the green tent, and leaned toward his screen. “I hate it here,” he said quietly.
    Kelsey noticed the dark circles under his eyes. They didn’t match the relaxed way he said his words. People from out West, where his hometown was, often spoke lower and with a little bit of a drawl. Funny that he kept that, even as he was panicking. She would just give him a minute. Just another minute or two to relax. “How bad is it?” she asked.
    “It’s hot. Of course, it’s hot.” He shook his head, smiling at her apologetically. “We carry our gear around everywhere, too. Fifty or so pounds of extra weight, all the time.”
    “You’re not in immediate danger, though, right?”
    Peter rubbed his hand over his hair, looking away. “You never can tell.” When he looked back at her, his arms twitched, as if he wanted to hug her. “There have been a few scares, but it’s quiet most of the time. More than most of the time.”
    Peter looked down, and when he looked back up, he was smiling as broad as he could, trying to hide the fear that had risen up in his eyes. Kelsey knew that game. She played that game every day.
    “It’s boring, really. So boring. I draw every day. I write you letters.”
    “You write me… you write letters?” Kelsey hadn’t seen anything for Michelle in the mail for a while. Only college acceptance letters, which her mother had promptly thrown into the trash.
    Peter shrugged. “I’ve only sent one. But I write you every day.”
    Kelsey started to reply. Peter, there’s something you should know. That’s it. That’s what she would say.
    But then he continued, “I write you in my head, too. As we walk around in the hills, and ride around to villages. I talk to everyone back home in my head. Is that insane?”
    “It’s not insane,” Kelsey said quietly. She did that sometimes with Michelle, too.
    Peter’s shoulders loosened. A happy, faraway look returned to his eyes. He didn’t communicate like any other boys she knew. He wasn’t shifty, or distracted. He thought long, and as he thought, his face was an open book.
    “I always mean to write down what I say, but I forget,” he said. “I