Sparked (The Metal Bones Series Book 1) Read Free

following the flick of my hand, the tap of my foot, and the swoosh of my hair.
    I stopped in front of my car door. This was officially the day from hell. Not one thing was going well. Not one thing was going right for me.
    I leaned my head on the car door. I just wanted everything to be normal again, to go back the way it used to be. I didn’t want to be afraid of walking into my house. I didn’t want to have to deal with a robot, living in my kitchen, right next to my room. Or some creepy guy staring at me from somewhere in the bushes.
    I didn’t.
    “Make it stop,” I whispered to my car. “Make it all go away.”
    The sensation grew stronger, leaving waves of heat flaming down my back. That person watching me was so going to pay.
    They hit the wrong time, the wrong place, and the wrong person.
    “Well there’s one thing I can make go away.” I threw my stuff into my car and slammed the door shut. “You are messing with one pissed-off girl.”
    I spun around. My shoulders tensed, my jaw locked, and my hands fisted. My gaze traveled until I found the eyes stalking me, coming from a car sitting behind our driveway and my mouth . . . my mouth dropped.
    Open.
    Even through the windshield, his were the greenest eyes I had ever seen—the color not even the forest could mimic, not even the oceanic tidal pools could come close to competing with—turbulent green eyes, framed with dark eyelashes and softly arched eyebrows. A strand of disheveled midnight hair hung below his tanned forehead. His full lips matched his hard chin and . . . I squinted. What was that? A scar? A thin white line started above his jaw, slid along the side of his face, down his neck, and disappeared under the collar of his shirt.
    A car honked in the distance, shattering my connection, and I jumped. I clutched at my beating heart.
    I rolled my eyes, but when I looked back, Green Eyes was gone. The car sitting under our maple tree was empty. I searched the street for him but he was nowhere to be seen. It was almost as if he had never been there in the first place.
    I glared at the empty car and got into my own white Audi A4. I put my key in the ignition and my car roared to life. This day kept getting weirder.
    The smell of books teased my senses as I walked through the doors of the library. I took a deep breath, savoring the aroma. The new books, with pristinely white pages, barely broken in, filled the air with a mint, crisp smell that mingled with the musty scent of the older books.
    Pages turned, and things moved in slow motion, but it was the barely audible conversations I loved the most. I listened and was surprised to pick out my friend’s voices.
    They were earlier than me, hunched over and whispering to each other. I groaned. Not good. Their three heads were bobbing up and down, scheming, until they saw me, and then said, “Hi.”
    In unison.
    What they didn’t realize was that I could see them kicking each other under the table.
    Carmen was a fiery redhead from Florida. Her hair cascaded down her back, smooth and free-flowing. She was always into the latest trends and you could tell when Carmen was approaching by the clank of her heels.
    Then there was Jayla, with her majestic blue eyes. No matter what she did, or wore, it only enhanced them. It didn’t help that her brown hair fell in soft curls around her face. Originally from California, she had tie-dye shoes and a braided ribbon tied around her forehead. We had that in common, both of us being children who’d turned out different than what their parents expected.
    “What are you doing here already?” Sydney pushed her bangs out of her eyes.
    “I needed to get out of the house.”
    “What happened to your arm?” Jayla extended my wrist toward her.
    Carmen frowned. “Did you hit it on something?”
    “It’ll be fine.” I slipped my arm back. “My mom had a surprise when I walked in the house.”
    “What was it this time?” Jayla asked.
    “A robot.”
    “A robot,”