Brighter, a supernatural thriller by V. J. Chambers Read Free Book Online

bar very late last night. She'd been in bed by 1:00 AM. Which wasn't bad, really. She'd gotten seven hours of sleep. She should be fine. But she wasn't. She was achy, tired, and dehydrated. She sipped at the bottle of water she'd snagged at The Grind this morning. She also had a coffee somewhere... She looked around. There it was. Next to box number two of brochures.
    God. Maxine didn't really mean she had to go through all of these, did she? That was just a waste of time. What Ramona really should be doing was trying to find out interesting historical things that had happened in Elston. She looked up from the brochure and considered. Did interesting things ever happen in Elston? Maybe during the Civil War? There was that monument to the guy who'd built a steamboat or something.
    No. The thing was—this was a stupid project. It was busy work. Maxine had given it to her because she couldn’t think of anything else to give Ramona to do. Ramona tossed the brochure she was reading aside. She looked at the next one.
    Maybe she was just feeling like this because she was hung over. Maybe if she hadn't gone out to the bar last night, she wouldn't feel like getting up and leaving the admissions office and never coming back. She didn't guess it mattered. She was stuck with this project, and she might as well make the best of it. So, if she felt like leaving the admissions office, maybe she should.
    Ramona ducked her head into Maxine's office and told her that she thought she'd have better luck doing research in the library. "The brochures are great, but they aren't in any kind of order, and I just don't know where to start, so maybe I can find a book or something," Ramona told her.
    If Maxine minded, she didn't let on. Ramona took her coffee and her water. She left the admissions office. Once outside, she lit a cigarette. She took a few drags and considered her options. She could go to the college library, which was, frankly, a better library than the public library. It had more books and better resources. She should clearly go to the campus library. But the public library was a block closer, and maybe she didn't want to find her answers quickly. Maybe she wanted to take her sweet time with this project. At least until the ibuprofen kicked in, anyway. She could barely think now.
    The Elston Public Library sat squarely in the center of Duke Street. Cars drove around the library. Southbound traffic went to one side of the library. Northbound traffic went to the other. (Not that there was ever much traffic in Elston.) The library was brick. It had been painted white. It was a diminutive building, though two stories. The buildings across the street (half the street, to be more precise) towered over it. An oak tree grew in front of the building, its huge roots ripping up the concrete of the sidewalk. To get to the entrance, Ramona had to watch her step. She'd tripped over the roots before. The oak tree had thick branches and a thick trunk, but never had many leaves. It was always sparsely covered, like a comb-over on a balding man's head. The top story of the library had two small windows. At Christmastime, the librarians placed electric candles in the windowsills, lighting each window up. Sometimes, when it was dark, and Ramona passed the library, the two windows looked eerily like eyes, and she couldn't shake the feeling the library was watching her. It was really festive, all right.
    Ramona didn't even glance up at the windows on her way in that day, however. She was too busy navigating around the roots of the oak tree. Finally at the door, she pushed it open and came face-to-face with the librarian at the desk, which faced the entrance.
    The librarian was Garrett.
    "Uh..." said Ramona. "Hi." Didn't you have to get your master's degree to be a librarian? What the heck was Garrett doing here?
    Garrett looked surprised to see her as well. "Hi," he said.
    "So, you work here?" said Ramona.
    Garrett nodded. "My mom pulled some strings," he