Alive (The Veiled World Book 1) Read Free

reckon?”
    Though every inch of my body stiffened, I pretended not to hear Reece’s stupid suggestion. My eyes did a quick dart across the cabin. Bella was smirking at me, but when she caught my gaze she jumped, and quickly busied herself with the task of buckling her seatbelt. I hated it when people, especially everyone from school, did that. Hated when they wouldn’t hold my gaze for more than a split second. It made me feel like a monster, when, in truth, they intimidated me with their cliques and their “you can’t sit with us” vibe. The truth was I could never and would never harm any living thing. Even when Dad sent me out to shoot the cockies, I’d fire a single shot into the sky to scare them off before I could do them any real harm.
    Noah peered over the back of his seat and smiled at me.
    “Maybe Reece should watch Dumb and Dumber ,” he said, then lowered his voice to a whisper, carefully mouthing the words so that I understood over the engine hum. “Or maybe even The Jerk .”
    I hesitated to smile, wondering why Noah, who had never said a word to me in his entire life, was being nice to me. But still, he was roasting Reece and I was more than okay with that. I leaned forward. “Is there actually a movie called The Jerk ?”
    “It came out in 1979. Steve Martin’s in it.” He popped a chocolate-covered strawberry in his mouth. “Bill Murray was actually in a scene but it was deleted before the movie made it to the big screen.”
    “Cool,” I said, secretly wondering who on earth Steve Martin and Bill Murray were. The sweet scent of chocolate-covered strawberries was driving me insane so I tore open the packet in front of me and popped one in my mouth.
    “Good, isn’t it?” Noah said.
    I nodded before opening my can of Alive and taking a large sip. Wow. Bruce was good at what he did. It was like an explosion of flavour against my tongue.
    “There’s a soirée in your mouth, right?” Noah said, grinning, his dark eyes shining beneath the chandelier above us.
    Black Magic dribbled down my chin as I choked down a laugh. Noah nodded sagely, obviously pleased with his ability to humour me.
    A lick of warmth spread through my chest. Maybe this trip was going to be fun. I took another sip of my drink and sighed, relaxing into my seat. It was good to know I potentially had someone to talk to over the next ten days, someone who had a vocabulary beyond “murderer” or “twin killer.”
    “I heard what you said, you little shit, Noah. You’re not returning from that island alive !” said Reece, before he tipped his head back, skolled the entire contents of his Black Magic can, smashed it against his skull, and let out a long, loud burp.
    Claire, who was Reece’s current girlfriend and was sitting across from him on the other side, laughed, as did Bella and the other two guys on the right hand side of the cabin—Reuben, Red Gum’s footy star, and Kyle, the surfer dude who’d never actually surfed in his life but was obsessed with it.
    Reuben followed Reece and drained his can before smashing it against his head, all the while glaring at Noah, his flared nostrils making him look like a bull. Kyle shrugged and made non-committal grunts before staring out of his window where the flashbulbs were still going off like exploding stars, illuminating his surfboard-waxed white-blond hair.
    Jacob, the quietest kid on the plane, sat on the very front of my row, his dark brown hair visible over the seat. He was the tallest one here, taller than me even. His farm neighboured ours and we walked to the bus stop every morning side by side. Though we’d hardly said a word to each other and had never hung out, I knew he was a good guy.
    Once, when I was late for the bus, he made the driver stop after he saw me running. Another time he was riding his trail bike past my property with groceries strapped to his back when he saw me working my way through a massive pile of wood Dad had given me to chop. He’d