Stray by Rachael Craw Read Free Book Online Page A

out.”
    I push the thought of Helena away and say it again, putting strength in my voice to spite her. “I love him.”
    “You think you love him.”
    “I do love him!”
    She holds up her hand. “You are seventeen. You don’t know what love is.”
    My fury is instant, a bolt of hostility eclipsing reason. The sound I make verges on a roar. The vase I take from the dresser drawers hurtles at the wall behind my headboard. The powdered shards collect on my pillow and all I can hear is thunder in my ears.
    Miriam flinches. “Real love – it isn’t always getting what you want. Real love … is sometimes sacrifice … doing what’s right, no matter how hard it is, whatever the cost to yourself – even if it means tearing your own heart out to do it.”
    A shudder ripples through me and my rage dissipates like phosphor after a lightning strike. I bite down on my lips and hug myself, emptied of air and argument. My head swims at the layered implication of her words as they touch on her and me and Aiden; as they touch on the impossibility of a future with Jamie. I’m finished. I pad around the bed past her to the door. “I’m going to have a shower.”
    She stops me with a hand on my arm, her voice quiet and restrained. “You’re grounded – for a month. No phone. No dates. You go to school, you come home, that’s it.”
    I say nothing. I slip out into the hall and into the bathroom, closing the door behind me, turning the shower faucet so the water streams full force, before burying my face in a towel and letting myself cry.

SIGNALS
    It’s quiet when I shut off the faucet. I stand dripping in the tub, breathing steam like it might heat the cold place Miriam’s warnings have hollowed in my chest, listening for voices down in the kitchen. At least she’s stopped yelling. I deliberately took my time, keeping my head under the flow of water, humiliated at the thought of overhearing any conversation about the sex Jamie and I never had. Part of me hopes he slipped out before she got down there but that isn’t Jamie’s style. He would wait, own it, tell it like it is without whining or excuses and apologise for the mistakes that aren’t even his.
    I towel off, twisting inside with guilt and frustration. Miriam was my go-to person from before Mom – April – got sick; hopes and fears, dreams and in-betweens, we talked about everything. Now there’s pollution in the air, debris piling up, trenches separating us.
    I knot my damp hair at the base of my neck and tuck the towel tight around my chest, determined to be calm, rational. I’ll dress, go down to the kitchen and I won’t shout.
    I pause at the sound of Miriam’s voice rising in question, alarm in Jamie’s response followed by the sudden scrape of chairs and the scuff of heavy feet coming up the back steps. I strain to hear. The back door clacks, a deep voice, recognition, surprise and demand. Miriam argues. Jamie challenges. I yank the bathroom door – my third crushed handle in less than twenty-four hours – and skid out onto the landing with slippery feet. A surge in static erupts in the bandwidth. I stumble back, stunned by the confusion of noise in my head, like a loud, badly tuned radio or a packed room where everyone shouts at once. It’s nothing like sensing a Stray and nothing like the annoying but normal static I pick up in a crowd of civilians. I usually feel Jamie’s signal like a resonant note and Miriam’s is as familiar as my own heartbeat, but this, this is something else, something foreign, something bad.
    I stagger towards the stairs and grip the banister, trying to differentiate between the shouts in my head and the ones that rise from the kitchen. Buffy comes bounding up the stairs, growling, fur sticking up, tail flicking in agitation, darting past me to the bedroom, disappearing beneath my bed. Adrenaline floods through me. Pins and needles stabbing up my spine. Fight and flight war in my synapses and my muscles cramp. It can