The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) by Frank P. Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

threatened plants, she intended to carry out her own searches for crystals. Alan and Kate already had their own mountain bikes and it had proved to be no problem borrowing two more. Being the smallest, Mo had lowered the seat as far as it would go to fit her short legs, and so, all too predictably, short-leg jokes became the fashion for the first few trips. She had just shrugged off their banter and surprised them all with her toughness and endurance, pedaling hard to keep pace with the others. But, given the glorious weather, they soon abandoned all pretense of plant or crystal collecting and headed for the beaches south of the Comeragh Mountains along the Waterford coastline. Dungarvan, with its numerous beaches, and Clonea beach in particular, with its two-mile crescent of beautiful golden sand, had become their favorite.
    And so it was here, at Clonea, on this serene afternoon, Mo sensed the change in her friends, as obvious to her inner senses as an unexpected gust of icy wind, or a cloud moving across the sun, might be to her physical senses. She remembered what Alan had said about fate: that the four of them coming together was too much to be explained away by coincidence. She also realized, with a certainty that none of her friends appeared to share, that the blooming had something to do with it. And more than anything she was surethat the same fate, whatever it implied, was closer—that all the time it had been creeping up on them.
    “I’m warning you, Mark!” Alan insisted. “I mean it. I’ve had it with that phone following us around all the time.”
    Kate and Mo exchanged looks. It was an argument that had been brewing for weeks.
    She talked urgently to Mark, after Alan and Kate had gone in for a dip.
    “Yuh-yuh-yuh-you should stop whuh-what you’re doing.”
    “Tell me—what am I doing?”
    “You’re muh-muh-muh-making eyes at Kuh-Kate.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “Yes yuh-yuh-you are. And know very well that Kate has no fuh-fuh-fuh . . . feelings like that for you.”
    “Oh, Mo—you’re just being silly.”
    “Why are yuh-yuh-yuh-you being so stupid?”
    “I’m not making eyes at her.”
    “Yuh-yuh-yuh-you know Kate and Alan are ah-ah-ah . . . an item.”
    “So what if they are? Girls can change their minds.”
    “Duh-don’t even thuh-think it.”
    “Oh, come on—you know I’m just pulling your leg.”
    “No.” Mo shook her head. “No, no—
no
!”
    “Do you think I’m deluding myself into believing that Kate will fall for me if I just play some kind of long-term strategy?”
    “Yuh-yuh-yes!”
    Their eyes met—hers aglitter, his shifty. “Okay! I can see you’re getting all wound up and it’s making your stammer worse.”
    His words just wound her up even tighter. “Yuh-yuh-yuh-you’ve got a huge cuh-cuh-cuh-crush on Kate.”
    “I just want her to like me.”
    “Luh-luh-liar.”
    “Alright—okay! Let’s you and me not fight about it.”
    “Fuh-fuh-forget it, Mark.”
    “Mo—for goodness’ sake!”
    “You’re muh-mad.” She put out her finger and tapped, like a cautioning whisper, against the cell phone.
    He sighed. He understood the caution perfectly. Grimstone would kill him if ever he found out!
    “Okay, so I’m being stupid, Mo. I’m dreaming of Conan the Barbarian warrior sagas, in which I end up saving Kate’s life.”
    Mo turned away with a snort. She just couldn’t bear his looking at her with that flushed puppy-dog look on his face.
    “I know I can’t compete with Alan. That’s the maddening thing. He doesn’t even have to try. They have all that recent orphan stuff in common.”
    It was pathetic to watch how he mocked himself. He made a game out of the fact that his attentions only succeeded in making Kate laugh at him. But it was a dangerous game because he was so utterly lost in it, like the one thing he couldn’t bear even to think about was for the game itself to end. Mark wasdipping his bare toes into the sand and flicking it