Tur: An Elsker Saga Novella (The Elsker Saga) by S.T. Bende Read Free Book Online Page A

that easy,” I mumbled. Ardis was one of those people to whom good things came naturally. She didn’t understand that life didn’t just fall into place for the rest of us.
    I glanced up as our waitress set two steaming mugs on our table with a little too much force. I raised my eyebrows. “Is everything all right today, Susan?” My voice strained with the effort of false nicety. In our twelve years of school together, Susan had always treated me like a social pariah. Clearly nothing had changed since graduation. I may not have been well bred, but I was well raised. I pasted on my best fake smile, though after enduring a lifetime of whispers and stares I had a very low tolerance for rudeness. It was my absolute pet peeve.
    I held Susan’s glare with my own pleasant look until she scurried back to the kitchen, obviously uncomfortable. Well, I was used to that.
    “Sorry, what were you saying? You don’t think it’s easy to change your life? You only think that because you’ve never tried.” Ardis sipped impatiently at her latte, the unofficial beverage of our rain-drenched town. “Look, Kristia, you’re my best friend and I think you rock. But is sitting around Nehalem for the rest of your life really going to make you happy? Really?” Score one, Behrman.
    The minute she said it I was transported from the rainy-small-town coffee shop to a dreary house on the edge of Nehalem.
    Rain fell outside the thin windows, and the air was damp with the faint scent of mildew. A cleaning caddy sat at my feet – judging from the smell of the bleach, I must have just scrubbed the toilets – and I sorted laundry while the television droned in the background. When the boredom consumed me, I crossed to a coffee table where I idly fingered my one indulgence in an otherwise uneventful life: my subscription to Travel Magazine. The cover boasted an Irish castle sitting in a brilliant green field of clovers .
    My heart tugged – in my vision I was thirty years old, and I’d never even been on an airplane. I forced myself back to the coffee shop, where Ardis was watching me closely.
    “What did you see?”
    “Absolutely nothing.” I shook my head. I was resolute. My life was not going to turn out that way. It was one vision that could never come true. I drew a breath. I was eighteen years old. Time to choose the path I wanted my life to take. There was a whole world out there – what was keeping me from living in it? From living, period? “I have three years of college left. I’m not spending it here. Not anymore.”
    “Awesome,” Ardis nodded her approval. “So what are you gonna do?”
    “I’m…” I was at a loss. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Well…” Then it came to me. “Got it! UPN has study abroad. The deadline isn’t for another two weeks. I’ll spend sophomore year somewhere totally different – somewhere people don’t know anything about me.”
    “Bravo.” Ardis clapped loudly, to Susan’s chagrin. She glared at us from behind the counter. “So where do you want to go?”
    I had to think. Now that I’d made the decision to leave the country, where should I go? I thought about the book on my nightstand – a Jane Austen classic. Those ladies seemed to be enjoying themselves, in their own angsty way. They certainly had a good time romping through the English Countryside. There was my answer. Once I’d made up my mind, I pictured something altogether different.
    I was on a big, fancy jet, flying towards Europe. A flight attendant handed me a coke with a lemon wedge, and I stared out the window at the endless, green meadows passing beneath. The businessman to my left read the Wall Street Journal, and the one across the aisle buried his nose in the London Times.
    Oh, crimeney. What had I gotten into now?
    “So where are you going?” Like always, Ardis glossed right over my little mind trip. Bless her heart.
    “England. No, Wales.” A few miles closer to home might make it seem a little less