The Monster Within by Kelly Hashway Read Free Book Online

the ins and outs of the ancient coffee pot, carrying plates of food to all the tables, and refilling the sugar dispensers. By eleven, I was exhausted. But it was a good exhausted. Keeping busy meant I didn’t have time to think.
    The door to the diner opened, and the girl from the bathroom walked in. What was she doing back again? She took a seat at the counter right in front of me as I put out a new tray of mammoth muffins.
    “Twice in one day?” I asked.
    “Excuse me?” She looked at me like she didn’t recognize me.
    “You were here earlier. In the bathroom.” Did she really not remember me? I would’ve thought my display in the ladies’ room would be burned into her memory.
    “Oh, right.” She sounded completely disinterested.
    “What can I get for you?”
    “Coffee. Black.”
    I grabbed a mug and poured the freshly brewed coffee. I breathed in the heavenly scent. Gloria had shown me the secret ingredient. A tablespoon of cinnamon. It smelled divine, yet the taste was so subtle you couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.
    “Here you go.” I placed the coffee in front of her. “Would you like a muffin? They’re fresh.”
    “No. Just the coffee.”
    No big tip here. I wiped the counter even though it was already clean. I needed something to do while I waited for the lunch crowd.
    “You live here?” the girl asked.
    “Um, yeah. You?”
    “Unfortunately.” Her tone was as bitter as her black coffee.
    “I take it you don’t want to be here?”
    “Look around. This is a resort town. Though I can’t understand why. Ooh, mountains. Ooh, a river. Big deal.” She took another sip.
    “It’s pretty, especially with all the leaves changing colors.”
    “Leaves. Yeah, very exciting.”
    I wasn’t sure why she was even talking to me. She was obviously a miserable person. I moved away, pretending to check on the sugar dispensers I’d already filled.
    “You going to school?” she asked.
    “I will. I moved here yesterday, so I haven’t gotten around to enrolling yet.” I still wasn’t sure how Ethan and I were even going to pull off getting into school. We couldn’t exactly ask our old school for our records. We’d be using fake names.
    “I guess I’ll see you around.” She got up and walked out of the diner. I reached for her cup, noticing she didn’t even leave me a tip. No big loss. I would manage without the quarter.
    Ethan walked up to the counter. “Hey, how’s it going?”
    “Good.” I kissed him hello. “Gloria’s got me working the counter until the lunch crowd hits. She said it’s good practice at a slower pace.”
    “I’m glad she’s not pushing you too much on your first day.”
    I took his arm and pulled him toward the coffee pot. “Did you figure out how we’re going to enroll in school? We won’t have any transfer records.”
    “Don’t worry about it.” He reached in his back pocket and took out an ID. It had my license photo but the name was different.
    “Samantha Smith?” I met his eyes. “You couldn’t come up with anything more original than Smith?”
    “The good thing about a common name is there are plenty of records to choose from.” He wagged his eyebrows at me.
    “You stole some girl’s records?” I said in a loud whisper.
    “I didn’t steal them. I simply duplicated them. Totally different.”
    I sighed. It wasn’t a bad plan, but Ethan had never done anything this sneaky before. He was changing—because of me.
    “Oh, you moved here from Phoenix.”
    “Phoenix? I’ve never even been to Arizona.”
    “You’ve got to take what you can get.”
    I rolled my eyes and pocketed my fake ID. Sam Smith it was. “What name did you get?”
    “Ethan Jones. Floridian.”
    “Well, look at that, we both came from the south.”
    “Yup. Oh and I had to get you a P.O. box. If we have the same mailing address, people will get suspicious. I don’t want to pretend to be brother and sister because I’m not about to stop acting like your boyfriend.”
    I