Dark Lightning (Thunder and Lightning) Read Free Page A

ground. I squealed and put my hands out in front of me. That was probably a bad idea, but
you
try to keep your hands at your side when the ugly, muddy ground is coming up at you.
    It was muddy, all right, and smelly, too. I hit face-first, then Cassie landed on top of me, driving me into the ground and huffing all the air out of my lungs. Which was no fun, as my face was buried in muck and I couldn’t inhale.
    I heard the snapping sounds of Cassie getting out of her rig as I finally managed to lift my head up. It was pretty dark, but the farmer on whose grounds we landed had a few lights up on poles. It was enough so I could see my sister sitting up, taking her helmet off, ass deep in mud. She looked at me, pointed her finger, and howled.
    “Oh, lord, I wish I had a camera! If you could see yourself . . .”
    She was unable to finish, convulsed with laughter. And she was still pointing.
    “Look . . . oh, my, Polly, just look behind you!”
    I did. There was a huge, pale shape, not a foot away from me. For a moment I couldn’t identify it, then it moved forward and nudged me with its snout. It was a pig. We had landed in a pigsty. And that meant that the stuff I had landed face first in was not just mud, it was full of . . .
    The big porker nudged me again, and snorted.
    “I think he’s in love,” Cassie said. And howled again.
    At last she got up and held her hand out to me. I yanked, intending to bring her down in the muck with me, but she knows that trick and was ready for it. What I wasn’t ready for was the grinding pain in my forearm.
    “I think I broke my arm,” I said, and passed out.

CHAPTER 2
    Cassie:
    My sister is
such
a drama queen.
    After I pulled her into a sitting position and slapped her around a little until she woke from her
swoon
, she howled loud enough to frighten the pigs and wake the farmer and his family. He shined a bright light on us.
    “Is she hurt badly?” he asked.
    “Not as bad as it sounds,” I assured him.
    “Call an ambulance, darn you!” That, of course, was Polly. It was unusually nasty language for her, too.
    “Where does it hurt, sis?”
    “My arm, and my behind!”
    “Sure you can tell one from the other?”
    I got her to her feet by pulling the other arm. Sure enough, there was a piece of her flycycle frame sticking out of her butt. I touched it, and she howled again.
    “Hold on, let’s get a look at this.”
    “I’ll call the ambulance,” the farmer said.
    “Wait a minute,” I told him. Then I turned to Polly. “How badly do you want to be hazed tomorrow at school?” I asked her. “Right now, you might just get a little respect, since that crash was the most spectacular I’ve ever seen. How did you manage to totally destroy a flycycle? I didn’t think that was possible.” And I hadn’t. Those suckers are
strong
.
    “It wasn’t my fault,” she whined. “It was that Cheryl Chang! She—”
    “Hold on, let me expose the wound.” I got two fingers into the hole in her jumper and pulled. It ripped open, exposing most of her butt. It’s a great butt, perfectly formed, drives the boys wild. I should know, because it’s exactly like my own.
    One thing you can never do if you have an identical twin is say bad things about her looks.
    Unless she’s covered in pigshit, of course.
    “Good thing you landed facedown,” I told her. “Both times. When you hit, and when you fainted. I wouldn’t want to get any of that nasty . . . mud in the wound.”
    “It’s more than just mud, and you know it.”
    “I know. I’m trying not to think about it too much.”
    Without warning her—she just would have pissed and moaned and worried—I yanked on the strut, and it came free. She was so surprised and shocked, she didn’t even cry out at once.
    “Darn you! Is it bleeding?”
    “Hardly at all. It’s just fat, not much blood in there.”
    “My ass is not fat.”
    “Did I say that? Not
too
fat, but everybody’s ass has fat in it. Still want that