Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 Read Free Page B

because it ends soon.
    He moved down the stairs with the same athletic gait he’d always possessed. The kid could have gotten an athletic scholarship of some kind if he had went out for sports. She still remembered watching him play flag football in middle school, watching the way he moved around the other students, the way he scored with an ease that everyone else admired. And then his mother died and all that stopped. He still had the grace though, still had the smoothness that connected each movement together.
    Going a bit overboard, you think ? She asked herself, smiling as she did. Maybe she was, but Michael didn’t know, so what did it matter?
    He opened the door and sat down in the passenger seat. “Ready?” he asked.
    “Yup.” She put the car in reverse and backed out the seven feet of gravel driveway. “How’s your dad?”
    “Asleep.”
    She knew they would go no further down that road. Michael talked about a lot of things, but he usually left Wren out of the mix. Thera actually couldn’t remember the last time they discussed Michael’s father, but then, they didn’t really need to. Things weren’t changing with his father, and the underlying issue would always be the same. His father was depressed. Depressed that his wife died. Depressed that he lived in a trailer and didn’t work. Depressed that he couldn’t stop drinking. Thera knew what Michael would say: depression wasn’t the issue; the issue stemmed from his father drinking every goddamn day. It wasn’t though. Not really. His father hated his life and everything else grew from that.
    “You talked to Julie at all?” he asked.
    “No. You?”
    He smiled. “I don’t think she wants to talk to me, maybe ever again, if possible.”
    “Shut up,” Thera said. “That’s not true.”
    “Come on. That’s why she wasn’t at lunch today. She doesn’t want Bryan hanging around me and that was their whole fight. Doesn’t want me going to this party tonight. She wants to separate from me completely.”
    “Why would she want that?”
    “Because out of the four of us, I’m the one not leaving this town.”
    Thera didn’t say anything, just kept looking forward though only subconsciously seeing the road and making adjustments to it. Julie hadn’t said anything like that to her, but…it felt right. “Why would that matter?” she asked, running through the answer to the question even as she asked it.
    “I’m trailer trash,” he said.
    And that was it. She had no argument against it. Not that she agreed, or could really even define what the phrase meant, but that’s what Julie thought, through and through.
    “I don’t—” she started.
    “Hush,” Michael said, interrupting. “Don’t even try to lie about it. That’s the truth and you know it.”
    Thera nodded, her lips pursed together.
    They rode in silence for a bit, the road smooth beneath her car.
    “Did you sign up for the SAT?” she asked.
    “No, not yet, but I printed off some information about it at school.”
    “You’re running out of time, Michael. If you’re going to apply, you have to have this thing finished within the next month.” They had been discussing him taking the test for months, but it was like trying to convince a polar bear to eat a plate of broccoli. He didn’t even want to attempt it, and Thera couldn’t figure out exactly why. He could go to college, and depending on how well he did on the test, he might be able to go wherever he wanted. His grades were nearly a 4.0, even though hardly anyone knew it. Anything the teachers put in front of him, he aced, but still Thera got the feeling that college was like a massive black hole to Michael. Something strange, that he didn’t understand, and something to fear as well. Something that he would never escape from if he started drifting toward it.
    “I’m going to read over the stuff this weekend, and I’ll make the decision by Monday.”
    She looked over at him. “You promise?”
    “Yeah,” he