Riser (Teen Horror/Science Fiction) (Book #1 in The Riser Saga) ((Volume 1)) Read Online Free

them friends. Bill and Nancy. Bill was a sweetheart. He was loyal and simple in the kind of way that made it nice to be around him. He was also easy on the eyes with his perfectly messy brown hair, well-muscled body (I think the guy had a ten-pack if that’s possible!) and a boyish face with long eyelashes. In the entire high school, his family was the richest by far! That was why they didn’t give him much of a hard time hanging around with me. The one thing the rich kids had in common was the hierarchy of elitism. And since Bill could buy and sell almost everyone that attended Geoffrey Turner High, he’d get his usual kiss ass line of admirers every day whether I was with him or not. I always felt safest when I was with Bill since the worst kind of behavior I’d experience from the true nasties of the school was a total ignorance of my existence. When I wasn’t with him it was an entirely different story. That’s when the claws came out.
Bill and I met randomly sophomore year when I rounded a corner and slammed into his six-foot wall of a body. His stuff flew, my stuff flew, it was a mess. But the most tragic part about it was I broke my electronic reader, a lightning bolt shaped crack straight down the middle. Electronic readers weren’t cheap mind you, I had to work double shifts at the ice-cream shop just to buy mine. I nearly cried between gulps of apologies. I thought I’d be crucified right then and there for daring to touch the precious Bill Merryweather, let alone knocking him on his butt. And without an electronic reader I’d have been kicked out of school for sure. I couldn’t count the amount of times the school informed me, “Geoffrey Turner High is not a charity. If you can’t purchase your own items, you will be excused.”
Jill Forester (the ringleader of my torment for the last four years) was the first to kneel down and try to help Bill up, sending nasty glares at me about five times a second. Her hair was as black as her heart and bright green eyes that made her cruelly beautiful. Why are all the mean girls gorgeous?! She was thin and perfect and she knew it.
When she saw my broken reader she simply smirked and said, “Karma.”
Karma, this ! I wanted to say, but held my tongue and apologized to Bill again.
“You should be sorry.” Jill couldn’t help herself.
If ever I wanted to smack someone it was in that moment. But Bill did something I’ll never forget. He shrugged Jill off and stood up. That alone caused a dramatic gasp from the crowd. He offered me his hand and smiled in a way that said, don’t listen to her. No harm, no foul, I’m fine. I took his hand and he lifted me to my feet. He picked up my reader, handed it to me and genuinely looked like he was sorry. The group surrounding us already started to close in on Bill, shutting off any conversation, until I was standing alone in the middle of the hall with my broken reader. Later that day when I sat down in Geometry class there was a brand new, state of the art, grossly expensive, electronic reader lying on my desk with a card. The card simply said, “Sorry about your reader. Hope this will work for you. Bill.” My heart stopped. No one had ever done something like that for me before, especially someone as popular as Bill. He was really sticking his neck out on the social line for me. It was the nicest thing I had ever owned and still own to this day. I knew he had a ton of money and buying a reader was probably like spending a penny to him, but it was a kindness he was in no way obligated to do, and genuinely came from the goodness of his heart. Ever since then we’ve been close friends, despite Jill’s agony over the union.
My friendship with Nancy was a different story. She was considered upper middle class which was still super rich compared to me, but not rich enough to give her the same respect that Bill had. We met freshman year when we were forced to be lab partners in Biology. She wasn’t happy about it. I was new