Capture by Melissa Darnell Read Free Book Online Page A

rise up and fight back, not hide.”
    I swallowed down a curse, my skin tightening all over.
    “Don't be stupid, Gary,” Tarah said.
    “ Don't be a doormat, Tarah,” Gary fired back before leading Aimee and the rest of their group away.
    Someone bumped into me from behind. Ordinarily I would have turned to see who it was. Today I was in too much shock. At the last second I realized I was about to collide with Tarah, and my hands snapped out to catch my weight on the lockers at either side of her shoulders.
    She tilted her head back, staring up at me with wide eyes, and everything inside me knotted up into an even bigger tangled mess. I froze there, our faces inches away from each other, unable to even breathe.
    Was this why she'd stopped being my friend all those years ago? Because, like me, she'd felt the friendship start to change into something else?
    For what had to be the millionth time, I wondered what was going on inside that head of hers. I used to know everything about her. Or at least I’d thought I did, till one day out of the blue she told Damon and me that we couldn’t hang out together anymore. No eye contact, no emotion, and no explanation either while she ended what had once been the best part of my life.
    I searched those eyes now for answers, but only found more questions.
    “Sorry. Crowded in here today,” I muttered.
    “ I…” She hesitated, took a deep breath. “I have to go.”
    She was running away again. From me? From herself?
    I pushed off from the lockers, stepped back and let her go.
    As she headed down the hall, she glanced back at me, her eyebrows drawn. In confusion? Or was she just annoyed?
    If only I could read minds too.
    Thursday, December 3rd
    Two days later during lunch, things got even crazier at school.
    Something had Tarah’s crowd riled up more than usual in the cafeteria. Everyone at her table, including Tarah, had their heads down, hunched over their phones and tablets. I stopped in the aisle behind one of them, trying to sneak a peek over their shoulder to see what was going on.
    Before I could see anything, Kyle walked over and clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to rock me. “It's finally happening!”
    “ What is?” I asked.
    Tarah pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, then glanced up across the table and caught my stare. Her eyes were wide open, rounded as if in shock, and shiny, tears at the edges ready to fall.
    I froze. Unlike most girls, Tarah never got weepy.
    Once when we were kids and Tarah's family still lived beside mine, Tarah cut her hand on a rusty nail that was poking out the side of her family’s back deck, which we’d been playing under and pretending was a fortress under siege from an enemy wizard. Her dad had let Damon and me go with them to the hospital so Tarah could get the cut cleaned. The nurse had also given her a tetanus shot. And throughout it all, Tarah never cried. Even Damon had said she was the toughest girl he’d ever met.
    So if Tarah was upset enough today to nearly cry in front of the entire school, there had to be something seriously wrong. Had someone said or done something to hurt her?
    I took an instinctive step towards her, but Kyle shifted his weight and blocked my path.
    “Hey, wait, you’ve got to see this video! The government's cleaning up our freak problem. Check it out.” He whipped out his phone, already displaying some website called The Truth Is Out There. “This Clann chick and her family were actually tagged and bagged live on internet TV.”
    I couldn’t have cared less at that moment about anything on the internet. But Tarah was talking with her friends now, everyone huddling in close like they were a sports team coming up with a new game plan. Eyes narrowed, Tarah shook her head with a scowl, muttered something I couldn’t make out, and stabbed the tip of her index finger against the table top as if to make her point. Her statement was met with a chorus of groans and mumbled curses from the rest of her