Double Read Online Free Page A

Not when a person is all you’ve got.
    I only saw Grandad cry one time, and he hadn’t been drinking. He hadn’t been allowed to. It was after the accident, when I went to see him, just that once.
    He was so pale, so almost lifeless, I thought he was dis-
appearing.
    He tried to talk to me. He tried to tell me the truth, and his tears kept getting in the way of the words. Great racking sobs tore through his voice.
    I didn’t hold him like I held Edie. I was too shocked.
    I should have held him like I held her. I should have done it, but I didn’t.

S I X
    S uddenly I was free to leave. Edie signed some papers to say she was responsible for me. She showed Gordon her driver’s license to prove she was over eighteen and who she said she was—Cassiel’s big sister and all that.
    She came with me to get my things. I’d packed them in my rucksack, and it was waiting on my bed.
    There wasn’t much. A flashlight without batteries, a knife and fork I’d lifted from the canteen, a tennis ball, a pencil, a kingfisher feather, an empty wallet, an old notebook, some postcards, a pair of jeans, two ancient shirts, and a sweatshirt I’d found on a railing.
    I found my rucksack in a Dumpster, years ago. There was a slash down one side and one of the straps was broken, so it got dumped. All I did was tape it up and tie a knot in it, and it worked fine. It’s amazing what you can find if you’re looking. Perfectly good things get thrown away all the time, perfectly good things and perfectly good people.
    “Is that yours?” Edie said.
    I nodded.
    “What have you got?”
    “Not much.”
    She reached out and took it before I could stop her. I watched her unzip it. All I could think was there might be something in there with my name on it, something just waiting to give me away, but there wasn’t. My stuff looked like it had just washed up there, in the torn black inside. It looked like stuff the sea had spat out.
    “I don’t recognize any of this,” she said.
    I shrugged. “I guess not.”
    She picked out the tiny, blue-streaked feather. “Can I have it?” she said.
    “Okay.”
    “It’s funny,” she said, brushing the fine tip of it with her fingers.
    “What is?”
    “That you’ve been missing and a thing like this has been with you all this time.”
    We walked outside to her car, an old silver Peugeot with a dent in its flank and one almost flat tire. There were plastic flowers hanging from her rearview mirror, a load of old newspapers on the back shelf. They swelled like sails and snapped shut when we opened and closed the doors.
    I wondered how Cassiel Roadnight got into a car. I wondered if the way I did it might give me away.
    Gordon and Ginny and a few of the boys stood in the front yard, waiting for us to go so they could get on with whatever happened next. Nobody knew what to say.
    “Good luck.” Gordon had his head half through the open car window. I thought about winding it shut with his face still in it. I thought about just driving away.
    “Thank you so much,” Edie said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
    Ginny said to me, “Let us know how you’re getting on.” But she didn’t mean it, and she knew I wouldn’t.
    “Okay,” Edie said, looking at her feet and then at me, starting the car, pulling it around in reverse. “Let’s go.”
    We turned on to the road, and the house and everyone in it were suddenly gone, as if they never existed. I thought for a second that maybe I’d been safer there, maybe I’d been better off. For a second I wished she’d just take me back and leave me. Now, rather than later. Now, before everyone got hurt too much.
    The car was small and messy and crowded. A fallen-over basket had spilled its stuff on the floor, and a big blue bag took up most of the room at my feet. There were clothes all over the backseat. The dashboard was covered in flyers and scraps of paper and parking tickets. It stank of incense. I was sitting on something. I reached underneath