The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook Read Online Free

Asperger syndrome, but it turned out he didn’t have it.
    “Uh-huh,” she said.
    “And also against chelicerate arthropods and decapod crustaceans.”
    “Talk normally,” said Cara, impatient.
    When her dad wanted Jax to speak so that average people like her or Max could understand him, he always said Jackson, please use the King’s English .
    “Horseshoe and hermit crabs. As you may know, neither is a true crab per se.”
    She sighed.
    “I could have squished it.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    She thought about telling him about the otter. She’d meant to when she came in. But now, somehow, she felt like letting it slide.
    Because that was the other thing about Jax, the other thing that made him different from everyone else she knew. If he wanted to, Jax could suss out what she was thinking without asking her.
    Jax, basically, had some form of ESP.
    He didn’t like it when she called it that. He said there was nothing extrasensory about it, that it wasn’t paranormal but as scientific as anything else—just not yet understood.
    Whatever it was, it made her hemmed in and claustrophobic: when Jax felt like reading her, her brain had no privacy. She’d seen him do it with Max occasionally, and even their dad—know what they thought before they said it, anyway—but the other guys didn’t seem to notice. Or if they did, at least, they didn’t say anything.
    She’d told him not to do it with her, that it wasn’t his business what she was thinking unless she wanted to tell him. But sometimes she suspected he was doing it anyway. And one time, recently, he’d spied on her for sure—about a guy she liked, though only for about three seconds—and it was so embarrassing it had made her feel sick to her stomach.
    He called it pinging . He pinged people.
    Anyway, if he really wanted to know about the otter, she figured, he probably already would.
    “I’m taking a shower,” she said, “so don’t flush the toilet,” and she went out and closed his door behind her.
    Their house had eccentric plumbing; sometimes the shower water turned scalding hot if someone turned on the cold water in another room.
    It was only while she was standing under the shower nozzle, feeling the warm water fall on her face, that it occurred to her: Jax and the otter—the otter who had spoken into her mind—might have more than a little bit in common.
    “Pleash pash the rollsh,” said Max over dinner, his mouth so full of corn on the cob that Cara could barely understand him.
    They were all sitting in the dining room, at the same oval wooden table they’d always sat at for dinner, with the same striped cotton napkins and polished wooden napkin rings. Above them was a dusty chandelier, and alongside the wall was a wooden sideboard beneath a large painting of the ocean with soaring white birds.
    They’d taken one of the chairs away from the table a few weeks ago so they didn’t have to look at it, standing there empty, while they ate.
    Max—still talking with his mouth full about something she couldn’t quite make out—was pretty much the opposite of Jax: girls loved him, and, being good at running and basketball, he was popular with boys too. He was smart enough, but he put his energy into other things, so he barely squeaked by at school. This summer he’d been using his money from the restaurant job to buy boards and board stuff, and hanging out a lot at the skatepark. And it was even harder than usual to get his attention. When he wasn’t at the restaurant, the park, or in his bedroom with the stereo volume turned way up, he was plugged into his iPod.
    She had to admit, Lolly was a way better cook than their dad, whose range was limited to soup from a can and frozen pizzas that he took out of the oven when they were still cold in the middle. Tonight they were having baked macaroni, roasted corn on the cob, fresh rolls, salad, and for dessert a homemade strawberry rhubarb pie cooling on the sideboard.
    “So,” said their dad,