Haven [1] A Stranger Magic by D.C. Akers Read Free Book Online

But she said it as if she was thinking out loud, reciting it from memory or something. When Sarah asked if she believed her story, her mother replied, “The pipes are old; the whole house is falling apart, Dear.”
    Sarah didn’t press the issue. Her mother had to be right. There was no way Sarah had anything to do with that.
    Too much had happened this week with finals, finding out that Barry cheated on her, and worst of all, her so-called friends knowing what Barry had done and never saying a single word. Apparently, getting sick the day of a party was unacceptable girlfriend behavior punishable by cheating. If she had not overheard Blake Miller talking about it to one of the cheerleaders in the hallway, she would have never known. As it was, it took her a week to find out. Her girlfriends hadn’t said anything; they probably enjoyed humiliating her, and they couldn’t wait for the fall-out between her and Barry to happen.
    So now, on top of all this, she had to deal with Marcus too. This creep, this low-life who was going to insult her family! Insult her dead father and the only parent she had left? No. Not today. Today she would not be calm. Today she wanted to be angry. Her anger was like a caged lion—beautiful, powerful, and dying to be set free.
    Sarah walked between the two buildings with her hands clenched and knuckles white. She was determined to make Marcus suffer for every innocent kid he had ever picked on. For every girl he had ever humiliated. For every loathing comment that had slithered out of his mouth.
    Marcus continued to laugh and motioned for her to come closer. Sarah kept walking until she was consumed in the shadows between the two buildings. She stopped to face Marcus.
    “Take it back, Marcus!” she said. She was so angry that her hands were shaking. She let her backpack slide off her shoulder onto the ground.
    Marcus was still grinning, as if he were a cat and she was a small, pathetic mouse.
    Her anger was fueled by his vile remarks about the father she had never known, and her mother who tried so hard to take care of her and her brother. He had no right to cheapen that. She wanted to wipe that pathetic grin off his face.
    Sarah reached down and picked up a rock the size of a baseball.
    “You’re joking, right princess?” he said, looking at the rock.
    “Shut up, Marcus, I told you to shut your mouth!”
    “Or what? You’re going to throw a rock at me? Sweetheart, you’re gonna have to do a lot more than that to shut me up!”
    Sarah reared back, and with all her might threw the rock as hard as she could. The rock soared through the air, but fell far from its intended target. It landed several feet to the left of Marcus.
    He bellowed with laugher. It was a deep, gravelly, smoker’s laugh. To Sarah it was like nails on a chalkboard. It made her skin crawl.
    Marcus bent over and picked up a rock of his own from near his feet. He had stopped laughing; his wicked grin faded into a taut thin line across his sallow face.
    “Guess whose turn it is now, princess?” His stare narrowed and his eyes met Sarah’s. She could see the malice in his eyes. He hated her as much as she hated him.
    Sarah stood her ground. She was breathing heavily and she could feel her pulse pounding in her head. She clenched her fists until her fingernails dug into her palms. She could feel her arms tremble.
    Suddenly, there was loud rumble and several things happened at once. Deep cracks began to spread from the edges around a manhole that was between Sarah and Marcus. The cracks spread across the ground and up the sides of both buildings in the alleyway. Water burst from the manhole sending its enormous cover twenty feet into the air. The heavy steel lid came crashing down near Marcus. The cracks in the walls sprayed water through the crevices, and the sounds of pipes bursting and buckling behind the walls rang out.
    Marcus fell to the ground, his eyes wide and face pale. “Earthquake!” he cried out. He got up