Frayed Read Online Free

by are the pictures I keep on my desk, but a picture is a picture, not the real thing. My brain has protected me from the painful memories—just like with the acid incident, which was too traumatic for a barely six-year-old girl to cope with. The doctors all told Diana the same thing: the memories were there, locked somewhere in my brain, and I had the power to remember them. So sometimes, late at night, I lie in bed and think. And think. And wait for the memories to come. I know I had walked into the reception of Diana’s work. I can still remember that I was so short at that age that my legs had hovered a good few inches from the ground when I sat on one of their chairs. I can remember you, Kesley, sitting beside me and fiddling with your hair. We’d been told to wait for our foster mother in the waiting area and not to venture into the corridor. But I think I’d grown bored, and you’d said, “Let’s play a game, Ava. Let’s do something.” We’d wandered into the corridor, and…
    Everything goes blank.
    It was ironic though. Not remembering much of my childhood was supposed to protect me, but it still hurt, knowing that memories of our birth parents were locked somewhere in my brain, unable to reach them.
    You remembered them, Kesley.
    I remember the cold winter nights where we’d sit in front of the fire, and you’d tell me everything you remembered about our parents. You told me how our real mother used to sing to me when I couldn’t sleep. She was a good singer, you told me. She used to paint too. Sunsets and brightly lit landscapes, but as her illness grew like darkness within her, her paintings became darker, more twisted. And our father, a kind-faced man, balding, with lines like cobwebs around his eyes when he smiled.
    What if my six-year-old self hadn’t been late for school? Would our father still have sped down those icy roads? Would he still be alive now?
    What if our mother had seen someone about her depression? Would she still have taken her own life or would she be with me now?
    And perhaps the most important question of all—would you still be alive…

Chapter Four
    The next day started badly—and not just because it had begun to rain, though that was certainly a factor. A thick fog clung around the house like a veil as I slammed the front door shut on my way out. I was already in a touchy mood after the ten-minute lecture from my mom about receiving detention, which, ironically, was going to make me late for school.
    Lia’s car was nowhere in sight, and just when I had conceded that I was going to get drenched on the way to school, golden headlights cut through the fog ahead of me. The soft purr of an engine filled the air, so different from the usual growl of Lia’s car. I frowned, squinting through the gloom. A moment later, I saw Jackson’s face through the tinted windows as the car pulled up neatly to the curb.
    I stumbled forward past the rusty, old fence and down the sidewalk until I slid into the passenger side of his car, grateful to be out of the rain.
    “Thanks,” I said in a voice that sounded like a sigh. “Where’s Lia? She usually drives me to school.” We’d made that arrangement as soon as Lia didn’t have to be supervised while driving.
    “At school. She texted me,” he said, and for some reason, there was a tightness to his mouth. Though I couldn’t imagine why. Fog swirled around the car, obscuring everything except the immediate surroundings. I found it made me anxious, almost claustrophobic, so I looked down at my feet instead. Jackson drove slowly, carefully.
    “You’re going to be late, you know,” I told him.
    “I know.” And then he smiled. “But my track record of arriving late to school is much cleaner than Lia’s, so when she couldn’t come, I offered.”
    “Thanks,” I said. We rode the next few minutes in silence.
    Jackson took in a sharp breath, as though he had been about to say something but had thought better of it. His brow was