The Lost Sister. Megan Kelley Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ her face shrouded in the thick fog that often rolled onto the island of Misery. In her dreams, Maddie would try to get a clear look at her face, hungry for a clue—any hint as to what had happened to Cordelia after that night.

      But nothing ever came.

      And in the mornings, Maddie’s dreams of Cordelia and that horrible time in their lives would shuffle backward into the subconscious realm of her cluttered mind, taking a backseat to her daily problems. But still her guilt remained constant, lurking in the corner like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. How could she do that to her own flesh and blood? Her own sister?

      Cordelia would never forgive her.

      Would she even forgive herself?

      Luke’s cell phone suddenly started beeping. He looked down at the flashing lights, his blue eyes squinting at the number that came up on the screen. He shrugged his shoulders, indicating that it wasn’t familiar, and put his finger out, signaling that he would only be a minute.

      “Luke Bradford…Hey, doll, I was just thinking about you.”

      Luke used names like doll, baby, freckles, honey, sweetness, brown eyes, when he couldn’t remember the girl’s name. For some guys, it could come off sounding cheesy, like they were using a line. But Luke had the sincerity to really pull it off. Even Maddie let herself get sucked in once in a while. Anyway, it must have been a recent conquest because he didn’t immediately blow the girl off.

      Maddie felt her heart make what could only be described as a sigh. Despite their better intentions of staying friends and not letting a relationship mess up what they had, Maddie realized that she’d been completely kidding herself.

      She’d been desperately in love with Luke since they first met—even before his transformation from a too-skinny, long-legged boy to the Abercrombie & Fitch model look-alike he’d become, and each time a new girl came along, it only made her feel worse. Worse than worse, it made her feel invisible, unloved, and unimportant. Sure, she’d noticed the looks from other guys, the sideways glances, the winks. But the closest thing to a compliment that Maddie had ever gotten from Luke was when he jokingly compared her to a racehorse—long legs, big brown eyes, and a chestnut mane. Not exactly what a girl wanted to hear from the guy she adored.

      It was then that Maddie realized that she needed this separation from Luke just as much as she needed to find Cordelia. Maybe putting these nagging questions to rest would allow her to take her mind off Luke and their “just friends” relationship; mend her heart…just a little bit. The trip on his father’s cruise ship sounded like a dream come true, but watching the parade of tanned and beautiful model-wannabes go in and out of his cabin would drive Maddie insane.

      She didn’t know which was worse: loving someone who was too old for her and unattainable, or caring for someone who could easily break her heart. Loving Reed Campbell, her former teacher, was safer, because she knew if nothing ever came of it, she could just chalk it up to their age difference. But with Luke, there was nothing keeping them apart—nothing except for his wandering eye.

      Maddie listened to him go on and on in his smoky “I’m going to get lucky tonight” voice, and continued packing her suitcase—trying not to let her annoyance with him show as it ate away at her.

      Lifting his legs up off her bed to pull her jewelry pouch out, Maddie noticed something drop to the floor. She bent down onto the floor, something that would have prompted a lewd comment from Luke had he not been otherwise engaged, and poked her head under the bed.

      An onyx rune stone—one that came from Cordelia and Rebecca’s old store—had tumbled onto the hardwood floor. Maddie grabbed hold of it and turned it to look at the symbol etched onto the other side, but both sides were blank. She hadn’t come across one of these stones since she first got to school. Maybe it was some kind of sign that going back to Hawthorne was a bad idea.

       That’s the understatement of the century , Maddie thought wryly.

      Closing her eyes, Maddie went through the runic alphabet in her mind. Cordelia and Rebecca could recite the stones and their meanings effortlessly, but Maddie never was able to keep them all straight. Maddie always had to fall back on a little book of rune stone meanings that she came across in a secondhand bookshop.

      Tess had once told Maddie that all the women in their family possessed a gift. It was a sort of knowing, a special extrasensory perception. Before that night on Misery Island, Maddie had just started to become more in tune with her abilities, but ever since she left Hawthorne behind, the door to those abilities had slammed shut.

      Just then, the name came to Maddie—as if someone had whispered it in her ear.

       Wyrd.

      The Wyrd stone. That’s right, Maddie thought. Now, what does it mean again ? Blank…blank slate? A new beginning? No, that wasn’t the right definition.

      Maddie picked it up and carried it with her as she moved across the room, checking to make sure that all her belongings were packed up. Maddie already shipped most of it yesterday, the big things. But the rest would be traveling with her by train.

       Wyrd…Wyrd…Wyrd. Maddie ran it through her head a couple of times.

      Standing at the window, Maddie watched as bundled-up students made their way across the icy quad. She dropped her head to the side, closed her eyes, and tried to will the meaning into her head.

      “Now, that looks like an invitation if I ever saw one,” Luke said. Before Maddie realized what was happening, his lips were drifting lightly across her neck. He whispered in her ear, “Do you really have to go home, darlin’?”

      Maddie laughed, stepping just out of his reach, angry at the rising swell of her heart and annoyed at his teasing. When she turned to face him, however, Maddie noticed his face held no sign of humor. He simply stared into her eyes. So intensely, in fact, that Maddie could swear she felt trembling in the back of her knees.

      “Luke…” Maddie let the word hang between them for a few moments, not quite sure what he wanted from her. She wasn’t planning on being one of his “girls,” and he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give Maddie the type of relationship that she wanted.

      “Aw, Maddie. You know I love ya,” he said, dimples deepening as he lightened the awkward moment. “Come here and give me a hug good-bye.”

      He pulled her into his arms and squeezed tight, too tight. Maddie could feel him inhale deeply, as if trying to identify her brand of shampoo, and then he sighed heavily. They held on for a few moments, a little longer than normal, when his cell phone went off again.

       Damn phone, Maddie thought. Probably some beautiful, airheaded, rich girl without a care in the world. Who am I kidding? I’m the girl with the sick mother, the crazy aunt in a psych ward, the deadbeat dad, the disappearing cousin—right now, I don’t even want to deal with someone like me. Talk about depressing. Only Cordelia could get away with having such a crazy life and still have guys falling at her feet.

      “Well, gotta go. You know how I hate to keep the girls waiting,” he joked, and pulled her away from him by her shoulders. Maddie didn’t want to look at him, couldn’t look into his eyes. She didn’t know if she hated him or loved him; if she was going to laugh or cry.

      Luke tilted her chin up with his finger. “I’m gonna miss that face.”

      Maddie gave him a half smile. “I’ll miss you, too, Luke. СКАЧАТЬ