Unbreakable by Rachel Hanna Read Free Book Online

removing items before pushing the empty case under the bed and depositing the clothing in the drawers. Then she returned to the bed and lay down, staring at the ceiling as she thought over the past few days.
    So what if you’ve been dumped here? Two weeks, Soph, it’s just two weeks . If her parents didn’t want her, that was fine. She’d show them she didn’t want them either. All she had to do was stay out of trouble for two weeks, then get home and get on with her life. She could still carry out the plans she had made with Abby, it would just be by herself…or perhaps one of her other friends would want to get an apartment with her. If they didn’t then it didn’t matter; she could always find a roommate online to share the rent. Finish school, get a job and get out . She repeated the phrase in her mind as she lay still. It wasn’t a grand plan, but it was a plan nonetheless and to Sophie it was something she could now focus on with a vengeance.
     
     
    ***
     
     
    Three days had passed since Sophie had arrived on the ranch, and they had passed relatively uneventfully. Breakfast was at some ridiculously early hour that her body protested at every time she made her way groggily down the stairs. Though the work day on the ranch started later in winter than it did in spring and summer, that small mercy was irrelevant in Sophie’s mind. She still resented the fact that she was cheated out of one of the primary benefits of school holidays. She missed the lazy mornings of past holidays where she could sleep in and then roll out of bed in her pajamas and enjoy a leisurely bowl of cereal in front of the TV for a couple of hours before even having to consider making herself presentable to the outside world. Aunt Kay’s delicious breakfasts almost made up for the lack of lazing in bed but it was still a struggle to drag her body into the shower, get dressed and get downstairs in time for breakfast.
    Once breakfast was done she would help with the dishes and then her day would depend on whether her aunt and uncle needed her for some or other task. If there was nothing immediate to do she would go back upstairs and lie on her bed while she listened to music. Occasionally if the dogs were around, she would play with Badger and Tilly in the garden. Their looks of ecstatic happiness every time she picked up a stick to throw for them made her grin. Their companionship made the time pass less tediously between chores, which ranged from helping her aunt with the laundry to cleaning the house and attempting to be of assistance with the cooking.
    Her culinary skills were woefully lacking but over the past three days her aunt had been teaching her how to prepare various dishes. Though her efforts were always praised at each meal time, she knew that if left to get on with things by herself, whatever appeared on the plate would look and taste nothing like what she produced with her aunt. However, she had to admit that there was something satisfying about learning to cook properly.
    Today, however, she was not busy washing dishes or cleaning the house or playing with the dogs. She was not learning how to create some tasty new meal or trying to doze in her room after breakfast. She was in the stables, mucking out the stalls as the cold morning air blew through the open door and hit her side on as she shoveled. She’d been feeling more than a bit restless and the thought of spending some time outdoors when her uncle had asked if she would help outside had seemed like a pleasant idea. One of the ranch hands was sick and her uncle had said he could use some assistance to get the morning chores done since they were a man down. Shoveling horse manure was not what she had had in mind though. She had scowled at the smell and sight but decided to get on with things. However, fifteen minutes in she had already had enough. An hour into the work, she never wanted to see a shovel or a horse again. She’d taken breaks to rest – after all, this