Nightstruck Read Free Page A

told him with a hitch in my voice. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” That, at least, was perfectly true.
    He just stood there with his hand extended, his face cold and devoid of anything resembling fatherly compassion.
    He didn’t used to be this way. He’d never exactly been warm and fuzzy, but he’d been fair, and he had a soft side that only my mother, my older sister, and I saw. There had never been any doubt in my mind that he loved me. But he’d been a different man since the divorce went through, harder and angrier and unyielding. I wanted my pre-divorce father back, but I didn’t think that was going to happen, at least not until after I graduated high school and left home.
    When they’d split up, my parents had let me choose who I wanted to live with, and I’d chosen Dad because Mom was moving to Boston and I didn’t want to start a new school for my senior year. Right now, that wasn’t looking like the world’s greatest decision.
    â€œI should have gone with Mom,” I told him as I slapped my phone into his hand.

 
    CHAPTER TWO
    There’s a part of me that’s always been jealous of Piper Grant, even though she’s my best friend. For one thing, she’s beautiful, whereas the most flattering way I can describe myself is “somewhat attractive,” and that’s only on my good days. She’s tall and lean, with lustrous red-gold hair that never seems to get frizzy or oily or tangled. As far as I can tell, she’s never had a zit in her life, and if we didn’t go to an all-girls school, she’d surely have every straight boy in school trailing after her in adoration.
    Someone who looked like she did could easily become a bitchy mean girl, but Piper wasn’t like that. I’d had enough of bitchy mean girls in middle school, thank you very much. Piper was popular, but she never let it go to her head. She seemed to like just about everyone, and just about everyone liked her right back. Except my dad, who thought she was a spoiled, entitled rich kid who got off on manipulating her “worshipers,” which is what he said I was.
    Although Piper and I went to the same school, we weren’t in any of the same classes. She wasn’t stupid—the Edith Goldman School for Girls doesn’t admit stupid people—but she wasn’t bound for academic glory, either. I’m in A.P. everything, and she was just scraping by “normal” classes with indifferent grades. We didn’t even have the same lunch break, so the only time I got to talk to her was when we passed each other in the hall, or after school.
    I’d been thinking all day about what I was going to tell her about last night’s nightmare encounter. On the one hand, she was my best friend, and if I couldn’t tell her the truth about what happened, then I couldn’t tell anyone. On the other hand, why should she believe my crazy story when I barely believed it myself?
    Every time I passed her in the hall, I expected her to stop and ask me what was wrong. I wasn’t trying to act all weird, but I’d barely gotten any sleep, and I was so distracted by my own thoughts that twice I almost walked by without seeing her. Two of my teachers had taken me aside and asked if everything was okay, so I knew I was being pretty obvious. But Piper isn’t the most observant person I’ve ever met—my dad would say because she’s too self-absorbed to notice other people—and if she thought I was acting funny, she didn’t say anything about it.
    I was packing up my backpack after school when Piper suddenly appeared at my side, leaning against the bank of lockers and frowning. I jumped a little when I saw her, and her frown deepened.
    â€œI’ve been standing here for like five minutes,” she said. “I was beginning to think I had to do a backflip to get your attention.”
    I forced a grin that felt awkward as I