First Light by Samantha Summers Read Free Book Online Page A

She stood up, waving frantically towards the door. I swiveled on the bar stool to see Cheryl and Toni wave back from the entrance. Cheryl was laughing with a door attendant while Toni made her way towards us. Toni had gone for a dramatic hair change. Her normally mousy brown colour was now a bright yellow-blonde, straightened in a perfect middle parting so looked like it was cemented to each side of her face.
     
    She ignored me as she sat down, talking directly to Mae as if I weren’t there. I plucked up the courage to say hi and she just sort of, sniffed in my direction.
     
    I felt invisible. I had on a pair of tight jeans and my favourite green top that complimented my colouring – the dressiest items I owned. I’d even kept on Rachel’s heels. I thought I looked okay, but the mass of shimmering glitter and micro-dresses around me made me acutely aware of why I wasn’t part of the in-crowd. I half smiled at Mae across the table. She looked back at me apologetically after Toni’s rebuff.
     
    Cheryl joined us shortly afterwards and I got a marginal acknowledgement from her, though it felt more of an appraisal. Her eyes lingered on me a moment longer than necessary and her glance swept me from top to bottom. I heard my father’s voice in my head saying if someone wasn’t polite to you, you could sure as hell guarantee they were just jealous. It was a sweet thought, but I was certain Dad hadn’t a clue about the psyche of teenage girls. I bit my lip to cause a pain other than the one in my heart at the thought of him.
     
    I ordered a round of drinks, hoping it might break the ice. Turned out I was right. As the drinks flowed they actually began to include me in their conversations. And the drinks really did flow.
     
    Growing up, I’d been allowed the odd glass of champagne on special occasions, and there had been times when Mae and I had sneaked red wine from Rachel’s room. Back-to-back schnapps shots, however, had not figured in my childhood. So, while the girls appeared to be seasoned veterans, I felt myself quickly and drastically losing control.
     
    The club filled up with people; a smoke machine created a permanent fog all around us, while the heat from all the bodies crammed into a confined space enveloped us like a cocoon. Somewhere in the middle, I was dancing like crazy and didn’t want to stop. I took the drinks handed to me and let the liquid burn the back of my throat. With each one the pain in my chest grew easier. I continued to twirl and shake my hips. Mae looked at me in concern, but Cheryl and Toni offered me what I needed: shallow, temporary comradeship that allowed me to drown my sorrows.
     
    Then, out of nowhere, a white tablet was handed to me. I stopped dancing. The floor kept moving around me as if I was at sea. Despite the haze of too much alcohol, I knew what I was doing wasn’t me and that my father would have been devastated. I rocked back and forth in my stupor. A man I didn’t know had his hand on my waist, yelling something in my ear about how much fun I was. I smiled, trying to focus on his face, which was no more than a watery blur.
     
    Looking at the pill in my hand, it suddenly occurred to me that I wanted my father to be mad at me. I wanted him to come yell at me, ground me and force me to leave the club. But he wasn’t coming. He was never coming.
     
    With that thought, I lifted the drug to my mouth.
     

 
    8 – Watchman
     
    The moment the small tablet touched my tongue, a lot of things happened all at once. An arm wrapped around me, lifting me high off the floor, the man with his hand on my waist cried out in pain and a glass shattered on the table beside me. Then, I was floating across the dance-floor towards the toilets.
     
    Once inside a cubicle, I blinked against the stark white light and two fingers were shoved down my throat. I squirmed frantically, gagging against the obstruction in my mouth, but it wouldn’t budge and I was held tightly in place until