LEMNISCATE by Jennifer Murgia Read Free Book Online

want to tell you, I just don’t know how. It was like someone else was up there on that roof with us making me listen to her and giving her some sort of control. Brynn said some weird mumbo jumbo stuff. I don’t know. She was crazy that night. She kept saying it was you, but the whole time it was Claire.”
    Chills broke out all over my arms. I remembered my dream the night Claire died. I was Claire. I looked down at her shoes, I saw the tiny scar, I felt the wind in my face as I fell. In my dream
I
died, and I knew it before my mother came into my room with the news.
    “What is it, Teagan?”
    It was my turn to swallow hard and face the uncomfortable.
    “That night, I had a dream about Claire falling. I saw it happen. I felt it as if it were real, but it was happening to
me
.”
    I shivered. Why would Hadrian make Brynn do something like that? I thought he was using humans for manipulation, not trying to kill us off.
    “Do you think Brynn made your dream seem real simply by believing you were up on that roof with us?” Ryan’s voice broke my thoughts.
    “It doesn’t make sense,” I felt water logged. Heavy. Ten years must have passed since we started this conversation. “And why would you all of a sudden see Claire in the cemetery? If it really was Claire?”
    “Oh, it was Claire, all right.”
    “How . . . ?”
    “Because I was thinking about her. I was wishing I could see her again and . . .” his voice came to a screeching halt as I picked up the pieces of his sentence and finished it for him.
    “And there she was.”
    We sat staring at each other in silence. In disbelief. How could someone wish for someone or something and get it, simply by wishing it so? That was impossible. Wasn’t it? I had wished for Garreth to appear in my room this morning and that didn’t happen. So much for that theory.
    “You hate me,” Ryan whispered.
    I sat thinking. Did I?
    “No, I don’t hate you. I wish you could have prevented that night. But I don’t hate you.”
    “It all happened so fast, I swear if I could’ve done anything . . . I wasn’t myself then. You know that.”
    “Either was Claire,” I recalled how different she had become in the course of a few days. How each of us had become forever changed by the events that happened last spring.
    “Do you think it’s a coincidence that I happened to be at your locker at precisely the right time this morning, right before you passed out in front of half the school?”
    “Okay. Is it a coincidence?” I narrowed my eyes, unsure where we were headed with this.
    “Not really. Think about it,” he leaned forward again, “have you noticed me hanging around a lot lately?”
    I leaned forward too. “Come to think of it, I have. What’s going on?”
    “I’m trying to make it up to you.”
    “How? By being Superman?”
    Ryan exhaled a deep sigh, “Brynn’s not done with you yet. I feel it in my gut. Especially since your mom is dating her dad. That’s dangerous territory, Teagan.”
    “So what you’re telling me is you feel guilty, you’ve become my guard dog and as always, Brynn is up to something.”
    He nodded.
    “What’s she up to?”
    “Beats me, but all I know is you’re already on her list and you have something she wants. I don’t know what. I live with what happened every day. At least if I help you, I’ll feel like I’ve done something good.”
    I let it simmer a bit. If Brynn had been willing to do me harm then . . . my shoulders slumped. Maybe she had something to do with Garreth’s behavior yesterday?
    That had to be it. “I think she’s gotten her claws into Garreth.”
    “Why Garreth?” Ryan asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    Lucky for me, I was sitting across from Ryan when the light bulb went off in his head, flooding him with inspiration. A strange, happy light returned to his bloodshot eyes as he blurted out, “Your pizza dinner! It’s perfect! You can start hanging out with her to try and figure her out!”
    “Do I have to