The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) Read Online Free Page A

room. “I’m a teenager,” he said. “I need lots of sleep. Science people said so on YouTube.”
    North curled his fingers in my direction. “Get up off the floor.”
    I sat on the bed next to North, and let him clean off my face. I wrinkled my nose at the heavy scent of sunscreen filling my nose. It was a little much and my eyes blurred as I wanted to sneeze. He ignored my ear, and cleaned my face and the marks on my arm. I didn’t need to say anything about leaving the heart. Either he forgot, or he liked it, too, and left it alone.
    “Gabriel,” Kota said and got up to sit at his computer chair. He turned on his computer and started clicking on different files. I could see little over his shoulder, only the edge of Internet windows. “Where has Luke been going lately?”
    “Shit if I know,” Gabriel said. “We haven’t really been hanging out lately.”
    “What have you been doing?” Kota asked. “Are you two okay?”
    “I’ve been busy.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Just trying to stay out of Pam’s way,” Gabriel said. “She’s still into that new guy, the one that basically kicked me and Sang out. He stinks and is always looking for money. They fight about it. I might start storing stuff at Victor’s house before the guy thinks to sell things off while I’m not around. And whenever I see Pam, she’s handing me condoms. Like she thinks I’m fucking around with Sang every time I leave the house.”
    I blushed, staring at the floor, embarrassed to think of if I ever had to go over to Gabriel’s house again and see Pam. Could I look her in the face?
    Suddenly, I realized Kota might not know the truth. I stared at the floor, afraid that Gabriel might reveal some hint of we’d been caught kissing or something else. Kota may not be ready for that. I hadn’t been ready…
    “Don’t talk like that,” North said, spraying sunscreen into a paper towel and using it to wipe closer to my eyes. The cool spray wetted my skin, and my eyes watered at the strong smell. I wanted to wipe at them, but knew better, as I’d probably get ink and sunscreen in my eyes.
    “I can talk how I want, North,” Gabriel said in a deeper tone.
    I gritted my teeth. Was everyone grumpy?
    “Guys,” Kota said with his eternally patient tone. “Back to Luke. Is he okay? The last time he ran off like this was when we were talking about starting up at the high school and he wasn’t really into the idea. Is he upset with something?”
    I turned to look at Gabriel, who was still on his side, facing the wall, but he didn’t say anything. There was a heaviness in the silence, and while I couldn’t confirm his feelings, I could only assume we were thinking the same thing. If Luke was upset about anything, it must have been the recent discovery he, Gabriel and I had made.
    Luke was the one who had discovered North had been having secret conversations with someone about me joining the team. He’d found Lily and her team, and had invited Gabriel and I along to find out what they were up to.
    Unfortunately, the answer was something we hadn’t expected at all. I wasn’t even sure I understood how their plan would work. To keep the team together, we all needed to stay together. For Lily’s team, that meant she and the four guys on her team got married. They’d fallen in love and lived together in a house in the middle of nowhere without neighbors.
    It might not be the only way, but it was their way, and from what we’d heard, the only real way it worked out for the long term. After talking it over with Mr. Blackbourne later, we learned other teams had tried it, but hadn’t been successful.
    Lily kept in contact with me, but I didn’t know what to say to her. I wasn’t really sure I had processed the idea. Gabriel and I talked about it on occasion, but we hadn’t broken off to talk to anyone else yet. I think we were still trying to get used to the idea, and what it meant to us. Luke hadn’t talked too much about the encounter