Lucid by Adrienne Stoltz, Ron Bass Read Free Book Online

gives a little wave. And he’s off.
    Either this guy has so much game he just Jedi-mind-tricked me into thinking he wasn’t hitting on me and making me wish he would, or I have a little crush on a man who could be the key to some big opportunities.
    The bandage business has no pockets. So I’ll have to hold on to his card for the rest of the night. Like I’ll ever call him.

CHAPTER FOUR
sloane
    A sparrow is trapped in homeroom. I walk in right before the bell and kids are freaking out because the poor little thing is slamming itself against the glass of a partially open window desperately trying to escape. No one knows what to do. Some swat books at it, many yell and disorient it further.
    “Stop,” a calm voice says from behind me.
    I can only see his profile, backlit from the open door. And then he walks into the room. It is a face of such strikingly unique beauty that it actually stops my breath. A beauty so compelling that I admire it for its own sake without even fantasizing being close to it in a personal way. I gasp softly, but no one notices. That’s how completely he’s captured everyone’s attention.
    He steps to the window with a commanding presence, and the rest of the class falls back. At this point the sparrow is fluttering its wings hysterically against the glass. The boy reaches out with hisbare hands and gently cups them around the terrified creature. It seems somehow to calm at his touch. He simply reaches through the open part of the window and releases the sparrow, who flies madly off without so much as a thank you. The boy stands for a moment, his back still to me, oblivious of the rest of the class, simply watching the bird fly away.
    He goes to a seat in the back of the room. At this point every eye is on him, the new kid in homeroom who just performed the Miracle of the Sparrow. He picks up a well-thumbed paperback of Kafka’s
The Trial
, a particular favorite of mine. But his choice of leisure reading isn’t what has me hypnotized. It is something more mysterious, and even perhaps darker, than the book itself.
    This guy is reading his book as if he is alone in the world. He seems to have no awareness, let alone interest, in any of us. There is nothing in the absolute stillness of his beautiful face to suggest arrogance or conceit, and this gives him an aura of limitless inner power. But the most striking part is that there is a darkness to it. A danger. Although I’m not sure what could be at risk.
    Unlike Maggie, I have no acting experience except for one summer at Stage Door Manor in the Catskills. I went there because I knew that the study of acting would help me in writing characters. I have written short stories since the age of six (okay, those were really short). And when I was eight, I finally had the courage to write one about my greatest fear. It was not a nightmare; it was a waking fear that would often keep me from sleep. There was a sorcerer floating beyond my second-story window. He was invisible, and yet I knew exactly what he looked like. Because he wanted me to.
    He looked like this boy now sitting in my homeroom, readingKafka. Or at least that’s what I realize in this moment, as goose bumps cover my flesh. I knew that if I ever let my guard down, the sorcerer would be able to come through my window, into my bed, and take control of me. I had rituals at night to keep him at bay. I wrote stories about these rituals, which always worked. There are eleven of them. I often wondered if I would ever have the courage to write the story of them not working.
    I don’t know him, and yet somehow I do. Enough to not like him. I know I will never like him. It isn’t personal. It isn’t a judgment. It is a fact as true and unchangeable as gravity.
    Mr. Sanchez introduces the gorgeous new boy as James Waters. Then he begins reading every banal announcement ever invented by homeroom teachers. There are fire drills in our future, bake sales (the horror!), the posting of rules for our