Falling (The Falling Angels Saga) by E. Van Lowe Read Free Book Online

bag. Instead of nesting on my lap, one of Amanda’s favorite spots to nap during homework, she climbed down and moved to the bedroom door where she sat with her back to me, facing the door. I again felt she was guarding me against something.
    “What?” I called to her. She didn’t acknowledge me. She continued sitting stone still, like an Egyptian statue. “I know if it was a demon I’d be seeing a side of you I haven’t seen in a long time. So, we can cross demon off the list. Right?”
    She continued staring at the door, as if expecting someone to enter.
    “God, I wish you could talk,” I said, my tone reflecting my exasperation.
    I opened my statistics book. I couldn’t wonder why Amanda was behaving so strangely any longer. It was late. I had to get to my homework and then, hopefully, another night of dreamless sleep.
     
     

    Chapter Five
     
    The sun was wrong.
    The angle of it streaming into my room was wrong for seven-fifteen in the morning. I sat up in bed feeling disoriented. My heavy-lidded eyes scanned the room. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror. Eventually they found the digital clock on the nightstand and something in my mind clicked. My eyes widened in horror. The angle was wrong. It wasn’t seven-fifteen in the morning, it was seven-forty five.
    “WHAT?” I screamed, jumping out of bed and hopping across the floor and into the bathroom like the barefoot countessa walking on hot coals. I’d slept right through the alarm clock. First bell would be ringing in thirty minutes.
    Why didn’t Suze wake me?
    I jammed my toothbrush into my mouth as I turned on the shower. I couldn’t even wait for it to get good and hot. I climbed into the chilly water. This was going to be a world record shower.
    Seventeen minutes later I was clean, dressed, and, with my hair still looking like a natural disaster, I left my room to make to dash for the bus stop. There was a note on my bedroom door. It was from Suze:
    I tried to wake you, but you were sleeping the sleep
    of the dead. So I decided to let you sleep in. There’s
    a note for your teachers on the kitchen counter along
    with cab fare. See ya later alligator.
     
    “Thank you, Mom,” I said out loud as I raced downstairs. That woman was a saint—a clutter-making saint, but a saint nonetheless.
    I found Amanda in the kitchen staring at her dish as if staring at it long enough was the key to making food appear. It worked because I fed her, which took another seven and a half minutes, then I called a cab and went outside to wait for him to arrive.
    I made it to class midway through the period. Mr. Percival looked at me with his easy eyes, accepted my late pass without comment and went back to the lesson. Tran and Jenny both smiled as I moved to my seat. New knots of tension clamped onto my arms and neck. With all that had happened since I’d left school yesterday, I’d totally forgotten all the damage my dark half had caused that needed to be undone.
    I considered dashing out again at the bell to avoid them but thought better of it. The longer I put off telling the geeks I wasn’t going to run for junior class president, the longer this tension and uneasiness would stay with me.
    Despite all that was going on in my life, I followed the lesson easily. I again thanked my lucky stars I had such high retention skills. When Mr. Percival announced there’d be a unit exam on Friday that would count for one quarter of our grade, I wasn’t among the students who groaned. Statistics was a breeze.
    When the bell rang, Tran made a beeline for me. No way was I escaping this time.
    “Hey, Barnett, weird stuff yesterday, huh?” he said, plopping his overstuffed messenger bag on my desk with a loud thud. “A freakin’ earthquake.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Did you know there’s an eight point seven six zero chance of an earthquake within fifty miles of Phoenix in the next fifty years?”
    “I do now.”
    “And we had one right here in our school.