Time Out by Leah Spiegel, Megan Summers Read Free Book Online

now,” she said, and I couldn’t help but notice the underlying note of disappointment in her tone.
    “Yep— for good ,” I smiled back at her; thinking two could play this game.  
    “And we’re back from the commercials,” Riley, who I think could sense a cat fight coming on, announced overtop of us as he turned the volume up on the remote.
    “Good evening, if you’re just tuning in, we have breaking news on the bombing of the 02 Arena in London that took place here, last night.” The CNN announcer, a woman in her mid-forties with blonde hair and dressed in a red power suit, explained as she stood among a crowded group of people. In the distance, I could see the collapsed circular white domed arena which was scorched in black ash.
    “According to reports, security was alerted of a man acting strangely minutes before the explosion.”
    Footage of a male teenager covered in a dark residue with blood shot eyes, sniffed, “I just thought that he was on something by the way he was rocking back and forth, but when I accidentally bumped into him on my way to the john, he went spastic on me. I shoved him out of the way thinking he was just being a jerk. If only I would have known—
    He couldn’t finish his thought as he suddenly covered his face in shame and the video cut back to the CNN announcer again.
    “Establish a connection.” Gwyneth murmured to herself like she was engrossed with some distant memory. “Make them see you as a person. Help them remember that they are a person. Talk them down. Give them a reason out. Fight for your life.”
    “What’s this?” Warren asked as he settled in next to Riley and Lizzie.
    “Nothing—just something I was taught while working in Paoua , in the Central African Republic.”
                  “Do you mean the time where you almost got killed by a terrorist?” Warren fixed her with a parental glare.
    “He wasn’t a terrorist —he was just a kid,” she insisted. 
    “Anyone who holds my baby sister at gun point, is a terrorist in my book, okay?” Warren rolled his eyes before looking back up at the television set.
    “Warren, you should know by now better than anyone that your sister is fearless,” Hawkins came to her defense, and I couldn’t help but feel a wee bit jealous.
    “I’m not fearless—I just found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She shrugged innocently enough.
    “Yeah—that’s not how I remember the story,” Warren emphasized. “And if I had my way, you’d be working as a secretary or for a daycare.”
    “I couldn’t do it,” she insisted. “It would literally drive me nuts to know that I could be doing something meaningful with my life, and I choose not to.”
    She shot me a look as I continued to sit there with my head resting against Hawkins’ shoulder. Normally, I would have just rolled my eyes, but I decided to let it go because I knew I had what she really wanted.     
    “Anyway, I was just saying this guy reminded me of a time when I worked in Paoua ,” she pointed up at the flat screen. “The first thing they taught me when I first arrived was how to use simple symbols when communicating with the villagers, like drawing a moon to represent nighttime and a sun to represent the daytime, on the palm of my hand. So if I needed a patient to take a certain medication twice a day, I would hold up one finger and then point to the sun symbol and then hold up another finger and point to the moon. Its elementary communication at its best, but it works. And after being in the small village for so long, you start to pick up certain words and bits and pieces of phrases.
    “With that said, I’ll never forget the day this sixteen year old patient was brought into the infirmary. He had been caught in crossfire between our guys and hostile insurgents. No one could understand him because both of our interpreters had been sent out to help the other victims at the battle sight.
    “For only weighing about a