Alienated Read Online Free

rest of the year. Well, a fourth wheel if you counted her best friend, Tori, but Eric didn’t hate her as much as L’eihrs. Close, but not quite.
    “Your mom making pizza?” Eric slipped his other hand up the back of her skirt, and she smacked that one, too, wishing he’d give it a rest already.
    “No, it’s—” All coherent thoughts ceased and Cara froze in place when she walked into the kitchen and found her parents entwined against the refrigerator, lost in a deep kiss.
    She cringed and raised a hand to shield her eyes while Eric spun a clumsy pirouette and bolted from the room like it was on fire.
    “Gross.” She peeked through her fingers. “Why can’t you guys keep that stuff private?” Really private—like behind closed, dead-bolted, soundproofed doors.
    Mom broke from the kiss with a smack and pushed a tangled black lock of hair away from her face. “Hey,” she said through swollen lips. “When did you get home?”
    Dad didn’t bother looking up. Only his mussed strawberry hair was visible as he nuzzled the side of Mom’s neck.
    “Just a few minutes ago.” Cara wrinkled her nose. “Really, Dad, can you give it a rest?”
    A dismissive wave was his only reply. Dad was captain of the Midtown fire department, and he and Mom were always…amorous…when he came off a forty-eight-hour shift. Why couldn’t she have normal parents who hated each other, like everyone else?
    Her appetite crushed, Cara decided to abandon the snack-finding mission. But first she completed her daily scan of Mom’s face, checking for pale, waxen skin or the gray semicircles that used to haunt her eyes. Finding everything smooth and rosy, she released a quiet sigh and turned away.
    Even after all this time, it was hard to believe Mom was really cured, that some celebrity prankster wasn’t waiting to jump out of his tricked-out media van to yell, Boo-yah! Your mom still has ovarian cancer. You got served! She wanted to trust the L’eihr plant, the asheem , but it wasn’t so easy. Turning away, she gave her parents the privacy they obviously wanted and returned to the living room.
    “What, no food?” When Eric clutched his stomach in mock agony and played dead, collapsing onto the sofa with a thud , she saw a glimpse of the old Eric—the dorky, beanpole freshman who’d made her laugh, even when the heart of her family was dying. Now he seemed out of place on her shabby furniture, like a young, blond Zeus come to wreak havoc among mortals. She missed the string-bean boy and his
jokes.
    “You’ve got two legs,” she teased. “Walk ’em back in there if you’re hungry.”
    He cringed like he’d tasted anchovies. “Geriatric porn doesn’t raise my flag.”
    Cara giggled. The old Eric was still in there. “Hey, let’s play Total Zombie Massacre—battle to the death, just like old times.” When he shook his head, she pleaded, “C’mon. I’ll go easy on you.”
    “I have a better idea.” Grabbing her wrist, he gave a mighty tug, sending her careening into his lap. The pungent odors of musky cologne and sweaty boy pummeled her nostrils, and then his mouth was at her ear, his fingers dancing up the length of her inner thigh. “Let’s go to your room. Your dad’s not coming up for air anytime soon.”
    Palming his damp chest, she pushed away and tried to breathe through her mouth. Why couldn’t he understand that all this pawing only pushed him further from his goal? “Unh-uh. Tori’s coming over.”
    He heaved a sigh against the side of her throat while his fingers halted their advance toward third base. “Great. Just what I need. Why can’t the clinger get her own life?” He pushed Cara away and moved to the other end of the sofa, but not before she slugged him in the bicep.
    “She has a life. She’s skipping student council for me.” And Tori hadn’t missed a meeting yet—mostly because her longtime crush, Jared Lee, was class president.
    “Why’d you ask her over?” Eric said, rubbing his