Feral: Book One Read Online Free

had something to do with running into Madison at the bookstore.
    After a short moment of contemplation, I grabbed both my Math for Meds book and its accompanying work manual and carried them with me to my bathroom. I had a very nice bath table to set them on, so I could read and jot down notes and fill in the answers to things I knew. Since classes started next Monday, I wanted to be as prepared as possible.
    Two chapters, eight different quizzes, and one refill of hot water to my cooling bath later, I was exhausted. My eyes burned, and I was yawning from sheer mental fatigue—I had forgotten how tiring studying actually was.
    I refilled the tub once more with hot water, the splashing stream tickling and warming my skin, and sank down to relax. I could actually feel my muscles loosen, and I hummed in contentment as the sound of the spray and the heat seemed to rinse away the stress of the afternoon.
    As I reclined, the details in the wall caught my attention and brought back so many memories. My bathroom was my favorite room, and as always, it reflected the same tone as my bedroom. When I was a child, both had been done in light pinks and lavenders, giving it a Disney princess feel. As an adolescent, they had been made over with bright colors of blues, purples, and pinks. Everything had always been hand designed and painted by my father – an artist – and worked on jointly with my mom, who also had an eye for minute details and the surgeon’s hands to carry out dad’s designs with utter grace and beauty.
    Needless to say, it was with a lot of sadness that I decided to change both the semester before I left for England, but after a lot of discussion with my father, we came up with designs that we thought my mom might have enjoyed if she were alive.
    Both the carpet of my bedroom and the tile of my bathroom were in similar camel shades, but where my bedroom walls were a light sandy-mauve with sponge-stippled patterns of gold and chamoisee, the small shower tiles were various and muted shades of brown, cream, mauve, gold, and ochre with the rest of the walls painted a lighter shade than the floor tile. I had then taken a creamy eggshell color and carefully brushed it in a precise direction just above the floor, making it look like waves crashing onto the beach.
    But as much as I loved my bathroom, I was turning into a prune and had to get out before my skin shriveled up like the dried plums—funny how one had to be wet and the other had to have its life sucked out of it to accomplish the same effect. 
    I managed to drag myself out of the tub and downstairs for some of the leftover pasta. As I sat curled up in the leather recliner, I took in the tiny changes my father had made to the living room while I was gone, all the while thinking about the beautiful Simon Treviso.
    The dark wood floors had not changed and neither had the strategically placed Persian rugs. The muted walls were still the same unusual shade of orange, but a couple of old paintings were gone, substituted for some new ones that I assumed he’d painted while I was gone.  The sofa, love seat and chairs hadn’t been replaced, but they had been moved, and he’d also replaced the wood coffee tables with new ones. He’d mentioned that he was planning to try mosaic work, and I supposed they were the fruits of his labors. Their tops were made of haphazardly-cut, randomly-placed sections of variously colored stone, but they were unexpectedly attractive.
    The small splashes of dark color around the furnishings brought to mind the gentleman’s hair, and the faux purple calla lilies scattered around the room in their ivory vases reminded me of his curious eyes. That particularly unusual feature was still a surprise in my mind, and if it were not for his head of dark hair, I’d wonder if he had some form of albinism.
    I wasn’t entirely sure why I was still thinking of Simon Treviso after such a brief encounter. It was very likely he was a professor at the