The Beauty Is in the Walking Read Online Free

well.
    â€˜We’re staying here,’ said Bec and she took a grip on Amy’s arm as though she feared Dan would drag them both into the night.
    â€˜What about you, Jake?’ asked Mitch.
    They were up to something and wanted me in on it, blokes against the girls, like our little stunt with me on the roof. ‘What’s the ground like?’ I asked.
    â€˜No, you’re staying here with us,’ Amy announced and she took hold of my arm tighter than Bec had grabbed hers. I liked her touch, even if it was from fear not affection, and the way it promoted me to protector – not a role I’d played before.
    â€˜Barbed wire can be a bit tricky,’ I said, not even mentioning my legs.
    We listened to Dan and Mitch joking as they climbed through the fence and when their voices had faded we simply watched through the car windows as the torchlight picked out where they were.
    â€˜The light is like the eye of some monster,’ said Bec.
    â€˜Don’t talk like that,’ Amy demanded sharply. The tension twanged through her body as she twisted beside me, trying to follow the guys. On the hillside, the light went out.
    â€˜Oh shit,’ Amy wailed. ‘We shouldn’t have come here,’ and she hunkered between Bec and me, head down and arms tightly around herself as though all the warmth had gone out of the world.
    Girls can be hard to read. What seems genuine can be an act no different from what Dan and Mitch were doing up there in the darkness. You just don’t know how much to take seriously, and if you get taken in you end up the loser. I’d been caught plenty of times and, in the backseat of Mrs Turley’s car that night, I didn’t know which way to jump.
    Bec rolled down her window. ‘Hey, guys, what’s with the torch? Turn it back on so we know where you are.’
    No reply.
    â€˜I don’t like this,’ said Amy. ‘What if something’s up there?’
    â€˜The guys are just playing games,’ I assured her.
    â€˜You don’t know that for certain,’ she came back at me.
    â€˜I mean it, Ames,’ I said, taking her hand as gently as I’d spoken the words. ‘They’re laughing their heads off and hoping we don’t hear them.’
    She gripped my hand in hers and, encouraged by this, I slipped my arm around her as naturally as I’d ever done anything in my life. I was playing the protector, but I couldn’t help wishing the way she leaned into me was a sign of something else.
    â€˜I wish they’d come back, so we can get away from here,’ said Amy. ‘I want to be where there’s light and people.’
    I pulled my arm away from Amy and opened the door.
    â€˜What are you doing?’ both girls asked in a single burst.
    It was quicker to do it than explain. Once I’d fought my way free of the back seat I wrenched open the driver’s door and fumbled with the switches until the road flooded with light. The keys swung in the ignition after I’d knocked them in my blind search.
    â€˜Hey, guys, Amy’s freaking out,’ I shouted over the roof of the Barina. ‘Come back down so we can get going, okay?’
    But there was no torchlight, no reassuring call from the hillside, no sign of the boys.
    â€˜What’s that?’ cried Bec, who’d wound down her window again, hoping, maybe, to hear the thud of shoes picking a way down the slope. There was a thudding noise, in fact, although too frantic and irregular to be the guys. The escalating sound drew our eyes towards the road where something shot into view, making all three of us jump.
    â€˜It’s just a rock,’ said Bec.
    Dan or Mitch, or both of them together, had rolled a stone the size of a pumpkin down the darkened slope, making sure it missed the car, of course. A plaintive voice drifted down. ‘Help us. Please get help.’
    Amy was losing it, big time. ‘What if they’re not faking