Fire And Ash Read Online Free Page A

juice carton across the room at me wasn’t?!” He whines sounding more like a twelve year old than a twenty year old.  
    I stick my tongue out at him behind my grandmother’s back. But I swear she has eyes in the back of her head because she calls me on it without ever turning around. “Ash! If you bleed all over my freshly mopped kitchen floor you’ll be cleaning it and every other floor in this house! So I suggest you move on from aggravating your cousin and go wrap your hand before it starts dripping blood.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I mutter and leave the kitchen, but not before shooting Sean the finger who has a triumphant smirk on his face
    “I saw that too!” Grandma yells after me.
    “Good catch,” Aunt Farrah whispers to me conspiratorially when I return to the kitchen and sit down beside her at the table.
    I load my plate up with what’s left of the food after my cousins have demolished it. Two pancakes, a slice of bacon and a scoop of eggs. “Where are Dad and Granddad?” I ask with a mouth full of food.
    Grandma narrows her eyes at me for my bad manners. I pretend not to notice.
    “They left for Highland Village earlier this morning. The rest of us are meeting them there after I get a few things squared away here. I don’t like leaving you by yourself, but you’re responsible enough to do so and your grandfather could use the extra help on this one. We will be gone for a couple of days until the search for her wraps up. It doesn’t make sense to keep driving back and forth when we are helping the sheriff’s office look for her by day and hunting for the phoenix that are responsible by night.”
    “Of course the rest of us doesn’t include me,” I say bitterly.
    Sean and Gerard both snort.
      “Of course not squirt,” Gerard says. “You’re being left behind.”
    I force myself not to let on how much his comment gets to me.  
    Aunt Farrah picks up on it anyway. She nudges my shoulder with hers trying to lighten my mood.   “Look at it this way. We’ll all be out of town for a few days. You can throw a party or invite a boy over. You know do something a normal teenager would for a few days. You need balance kiddo, and you don’t have enough of it.” Of course Aunt Farrah would say that. Her motto is work hard, play harder.  
    “Ash has to actually have friends other than Becca to do those things,” Gerard, Tweedledum, quips from his seat beside Tweedledee.  
      Aunt Farrah is about to rip into him and I’m about to along with her. This is how things have always been. Them against us. The girls versus the guys.  
    Grandma intervenes before we can. “It’s about time for us to leave. Boys go get ready. Farrah you too.”  
    My aunt and my cousins push away from the table without a word and follow the directive.
    I’m chewing a mouthful of eggs when Grandma initiates a conversation I’d purposely been avoiding having.  
    “Ash, how’s your summer reading coming along? Did you ever make it to the library to get your books?” She asks taking another sip of her coffee.
      I open my mouth to lie, but then think better of it. Just like she has eyes in the back of her head, she also has a sixth sense when it comes to all of us lying to her.
    “No,” I mutter.  
    “It’s already July Ash. The end of summer will be here before you know it. When do you plan on completing it? You have six books to read before September right?”
    “Yes,” my shoulders slump and my head hurts just thinking about it. As a junior I’ll be taking AP Literature, Physics,   Algebra II, and AP U.S. History for core classes. My two advanced placement teachers have assigned me three books a piece to read over the summer in preparation for their classes. No doubt, there will be some type of project or test over the material in the first few days of school. I like reading but not when I am forced to and not when I don’t have a choice as to what I read. “Since I’ll be here alone for a few days, I