Entanglements by P R Mason Read Free Book Online

room.
    Naturally, Mom couldn’t drive me to school, and since I was major league late I couldn’t walk, so Juliette came to the rescue with her sweet yellow VW Beetle. “I don’t mind, Mom,” she had replied sweetly to my mother’s request, making my teeth grind. Needless to say, the silence of the ride rendered it more than a bit uncomfortable. When she stopped the car I didn’t even wait for her to turn it off before hopping out.
    A grinning Petra waited on the sidewalk outside the school.
    “I might as well be living in Iran,” Petra said as I joined her.
    “Good morning to you too.”
    “I’m grounded. Dad caught me sneaking into the house last night.”
    “Yeah, grounded is totally like living in Iran,” I drawled.
    “Right.” Petra seemed to take my words as seriously meant. “My dad is so Ayatollah. But last night was completely worth it. So totally sick.”
    “Sick is the word I’d use too,” I said.
    Somewhere between three a.m. and four a.m. I’d decided there must have been some kind of gas seeping into the tunnel that had caused me to hallucinate. The wall couldn’t have moved like that. But between four a.m. and five a.m. I’d decided I’d actually seen the hand. Delusion couldn’t extend that far. Besides the scratches on my arm were real.
    “Chase and I are like totally together again,” Petra gushed.
    “I could tell. Your tongue jammed down his throat was my first clue.”
    “Just wait until you have your own cute throat to jam your tongue down, then you’ll see how I feel. Oh and here comes a potential candidate now.” Petra inclined her head to the left and I glanced over my shoulder.
    Rom walked with a long and easy stride as he approached us. For a moment he didn’t seem quite real. He had on the same uniform he’d worn yesterday, except today he carried the jacket over his arm and he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Rom was quite simply mouthwatering. The fabric of the ordinary white shirt molded to his wide shoulders and broad chest like a second skin. Through the branches of the trees lining the sidewalk, rays of sunshine shone down over Rom’s head as if nature itself spotlighted him saying: look at this magnificent creature.
    “I’ll leave you two alone,” Petra said, her grin widening. She’d obviously seen me practically panting for the guy.
    “Shut up."
    She chuckled and bounced off into the building.
    Rom stopped on the sidewalk in front of me. “Greetings of the morning, Kizzy.”
    “Greetings,” I said, adopting his strange phraseology. Where the heck had he learned English?
    “Are you in good health?”
    “Yes, but I couldn’t sleep at all. That wall. That hand. What was all that?”
    Rom stood silent.
    “I mean the wall was moving and that hand tried to grab me. You saw it right?”
    “Kizzy, I know not of what you speak,” he said.
    “The hand with claws. It was there.”
    Rom shook his head. “I saw no hand in the wall but your own.”
    “Then how did I get this scratch?” Holding out my arm, I pointed to bandage.
    “Your arm caught in a hole in the brick as you tagged the wall. You suffered injury against the sharp surface when I assisted in a pull to freedom.”
    “You must think I’m crazy,” I mumbled.
    I shook my head. The thought of the gas fumes again offered an explanation. The gas explanation was preferable to drooling lunacy.
    Rom had been speaking and I’d missed some of it while wrapped in my own thoughts. I tuned in for the last bit. "...If you would break bread with me this evening.”
    “You want to go on a date? Have dinner? Eat?” I tried to keep total shock out of my tone.
    He nodded.
    “With me?” I asked.
    “Of who else would I speak?” He glanced around us.
    “But we should talk about what happened in the tunnel.”
    “I prefer discourse regarding our dinner together.”
    “If you think I’m crazy, why would you want to date me?”
    Rom’s smiled with that cutie pie smirk I used to think of as an