Autumn Read Free

hadn’t stayed long enough to hear what he might tell her.
    If he had been real and not a sign she was losing her mind, then she’d missed possibly her only chance to say whatever it was she needed to say, and to hear what he had to offer. Instead of listening, she ran.
    Maybe that’s what her life was going to be now, a long series of events she was simply going to flee from.
    She turned the volume up and let Vince Neil’s high-pitched voice distract her as she counted telephone poles and tried to imagine what hell was waiting for her at the end of the road.

Chapter Three
     
    Earthquake .
    It was the first semi-rational thought to come into Cooper Reynolds’s mind when his bed began to bounce violently. Instead of getting up to hide in a doorframe or protect himself in any logical manner, he threw his pillow over his head and closed his eyes, hoping the trembling earth would respect his five more minutes policy.
    “Get up, you lazy jerk. Up, up, up. ” His sister Mia’s voice was distinctive even through the muffled mass of fabric and feathers blocking his ears. She was only fifteen but had the husky tone of a sixty-year-old jazz singer, all raspy and a bit too deep for her tiny frame.
    “Screw off, Mia, I’m sleeping.”
    She continued to bounce, and her bare feet against his calf were freezing. Cooper sat up and whacked her with his pillow.
    “I said, screw off, Mia .”
    “You’re up now, may as well come have breakfast.” She hopped down, sticking the landing nimbly, and dashed into the hall before he could hit her again.
    For a moment Cooper considered rolling over and going back to bed, but he was upright, and he did smell a little foul. Maybe a shower and a good breakfast wasn’t such a bad idea.
    Once he was clean-ish and his dark brown hair wasn’t in such a state of disarray, he lumbered down to the kitchen and pulled up a chair at the island. Saturday was one of the rare days his mom didn’t have to work, so it was nice to look forward to a breakfast that wasn’t cold cereal.
    Mia was scrounging through the fridge, her nearly black hair pulled away from her face in a messy bun, and she was still wearing her penguin-print pajama pants and her volleyball shirt from the previous season. She handed their mother a bottle of milk and a carton of eggs.
    “Pancakes?” Cooper asked hopefully, rubbing some stubborn sleep from his eyes.
    “French toast.” His mom smiled at him over her shoulder, her short dark hair perfectly styled in spite of the early hour. “Is that okay?”
    He shrugged. “All tastes the same with syrup on it.”
    “Your enthusiasm is touching.” She laid strips of bacon onto a cookie sheet and put it in the oven, trading it for another sheet of already crispy meat. When the oven door opened, the kitchen was filled with the salty, delicious fragrance of bacon, and Cooper’s stomach growled audibly.
    “Here.” She dabbed the tops of the strips with a paper towel then dumped them onto a plate, placing it in front of him. “You two dig in.”
    He saw the way her mouth curved into a frown when she said two and knew without a doubt she was thinking about Jeremy. He didn’t mention his brother’s name because it had become second nature to pretend Jer hadn’t existed, but seeing the way her face momentarily let the pain show through, Cooper knew she hadn’t forgotten.
    Mia snatched the first piece of bacon off the plate and climbed up on the kitchen counter, reaching into the spice cupboard to hand their mother cinnamon and the family French toast secret—cardamom.
    The other guys on the team might tease him for knowing what went into baking, but that would have required them to spend any time with him outside school.
    When the first piece of soggy bread hit the skillet, a satisfying hiss swam through the air and with it the sweet, satisfying scent of bread. Since Mia was up on the counter, Cooper moved to the fridge to find the syrup and grabbed a half-full carton of OJ