Grandfather by Anthony Wade Read Free Book Online Page A

Both of them had fair skin. They
were both attractive.
    “ Who is that?” I asked
Edgar quietly, but he ignored me, leading me all the way to
them.
    “ How ya doing, Mae,” Edgar
asked when we reached the table.
    Mae looked up and grinned,
revealing her dimples. “Oh, good, Edgar,” she said in an extremely
cheerful tone. “Just been helping out Dr. Mac as usual,” she told
him. When her eyes landed on me, that smile grew even wider. I
honestly didn’t think that was possible “Well, you must be Carsyn,”
she said. Once again, some random person knew my name.
    “ Yeah,” Edgar said. “But
watch out. He’s got a lot of questions and he’ll give you one hell
of a time.”
    Mae snickered. “I’m
Maebelle, but everybody calls me Mae.” She then pointed at the girl
sitting next to her. “This is my daughter, Marley.” Marley looked
at me, her mouth wide open. She couldn’t take her eyes off me. It
was actually really awkward.
    “ Hi,” Marley said slowly.
Mae nudged her in the arm. Marley quickly closed her mouth and
smiled, revealing dimples just like her mother’s. They were both
way too happy-looking. Something told me that was going to get
annoying. Quick.
    “ Hi,” I said quietly. I
honestly didn’t have much more to say.
    Edgar sat down, so I did
too. We ate as he and Mae talked about the Dr. Mac guy Mae had
mentioned. He was apparently the only doctor in the underground
facility. He, like Edgar, was pretty rich, and Mae made him out to
be one of the greatest doctors out there. I, of course, didn’t know
if that was true. “He’s gone to get more medicine,” Mae told Edgar.
“Left this morning. Roselyn still has the flu, but she’ll be
perfectly fine.”
    Marley focused primarily
on her food, not saying a word. I guess I couldn’t really judge
since I kept quiet too. I tuned out of Edgar’s and Mae’s
conversation to focus on my sandwich and the other people eating
around me. The sandwich actually wasn’t that bad. I wondered if it
was because I was just so hungry. And the water . . . it didn’t
taste bad. I figured it was safe, or at least I hoped
so.
    Watching the people was
interesting. They talked and laughed with one other. Actually, that
was really all you could hear in the room: talking and laughter.
They really seemed to like it there. They were so . . .
normal-looking! I wondered who they were before discovering the
underground community. Were they poor, or were they rich like
Edgar?
    I tuned back to the
goings-on of my own table to see that Edgar and Mae had stood up.
Leaving their unfinished food on the table, and without saying
anything, they left. What were they doing? Edgar was just going to
leave me there alone. I sure did wish I’d been paying attention
rather than looking at everybody else. Was I supposed to go with
them?
    “ They’ll be back,” Marley
said, responding to my looks of confusion. “They’re just going to
ask Andria how Roselyn’s doing.” I followed Marley’s finger to a
table occupied by several ladies, all laughing with one another.
Edgar and Mae went to one woman in particular. I assumed that was
Andria. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but they
didn’t seem too worried.
    Andria looked like she was
Mae’s age. And not to be mean or anything, but she didn’t look
nearly as good as Mae. But she did look happy like everybody
else.
    “ Oh,” I said, twisting my
body back around.
    “ Yeah,” Marley said. A few
awkward seconds of silence passed. “You like it here so
far?”
    I waited to swallow the
last of my sandwich before answering. “I’ve not been here
long.”
    “ You’ll love it,” she said
excitingly.
    There was another pause of
silence.
    “ How old are you?” she
asked.
    “ Sixteen,” I replied,
taking my apple from the tray.
    Marley took a sip of
water. “I just turned sixteen,” she said. “And Ashton is your age,
too.”
    I think she was waiting
for me to ask who Ashton was. I nodded, pretending to