Equilibrium Read Online Free Page A

sparrows from a low bush into the pines.
    Heather untangled herself from the backseat and ran ahead.
    “Wait a minute!” Darcy chased Heather to the cottage, her sneakers sinking into the snowy yard. “You okay?”
    “Sure, why?”
    “You’re kind of quiet today. I mean, more than usual.”
    “Hey, that wasn’t here last fall.” A weathered hammock hung between two spindly pines. The trees listed inward. The ropes strained. Heather gave the hammock a halfhearted prod, and the crapped-out netting swayed.
    Darcy felt herself shaking her head, her whole body saying no. “Don’t touch it.”
    Cam came up behind Heather and swung the cooler into her butt. “Quit it,” Heather said. Cam set the cooler down and pretended to sulk.
    Nick ran past Darcy and hurled himself sideways onto the hammock, pitching it back and forth.
    “There’s room for two. Come to Daddy.” Nick held out his arms to Darcy, as if she were a toddler needing direction.
    “Shut up, Nick.” Heather crossed her arms against the image Darcy couldn’t block out, no matter how hard she tried.
    The backyard hammock at home had been their special place for years. Even when Daddy was too down to manage anything else, they’d swing for hours. Sometimes he’d ask her to memorize poems and recite verse back to him. Darcy found out the hard way that some poems served as a foreshadowing of events to come. She should’ve understood the cautionary tale when he’d asked her not to tell her mother about their secret Shakespeare sonnet.

    No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled

    Darcy snatched up the cooler and ran down the trail to the beach. She squeezed through the overgrown bushes and climbed up the slippery rock path to her favorite perfectly flat boulder. Snow covered the lake, and she blinked against the reflected light till her sight adjusted. She sat, drew up her legs, hugged her knees. Her throat burned, dry as a bone, and she gulped at the beer.
    “What the fuck, Darcy? You’re pissing Nick off, you know.” Cam came up the path alone, sent as a messenger. He plunked down on the rock and stretched out his legs.
    She knew what to do with a messenger. “I was just wondering. Could you possibly use less creative language?” Even she sometimes cursed, but only for shock value. “Sure fuck could be construed as colorful language. But swearing is generally used as a defense mechanism, a lazy man’s way to communicate,” she said, repeating her father’s warning word for word.
    “You used to be nice, Darcy.” He spoke through a swallow of beer, wiped dribble off his chin with the back of his hand.
    Evidently, she’d disappointed him by changing into someone he had trouble recognizing. She didn’t even recognize herself lately, so she kept experimenting.
    Cam frowned. He swung the heel of his sneaker into a patch of ice, breaking off chunks. His outrageously long eyelashes curled up to meet the mane of thick curls drooping over his forehead. When they were both eight, he’d begged her to trim his feminine lashes for him, and she’d slipped. Instead of telling, Cam had covered for her. Told his mother he’d fallen against a fence picket during a game of tag. A flesh-toned scar still cut across his brow bone.
    “Sorry.” Darcy rubbed Cam’s shoulder, trying to erase the verbal jabs she’d given him.
    “Heather thinks Nick’s going to ask you to the prom.”
    It was Darcy’s turn to sputter on her beer. Last week, she’d mentioned wanting to go to the junior prom to Nick as a joke he’d apparently taken seriously. Something ridiculous like a bunch of teenage girls dressing up like fairy princesses might prove a worthy distraction. For the boys, the evening suggested a promise not evident in any fairy tale she’d ever read. No happy ever after, just happy for about fifteen minutes. Or so she’d heard. Despite rumors to the contrary, she was still