Strange in Skin Read Free Page A

seemed so very sad. Was it a mistake that he was in there? It
had to be, I decided. He looked like he couldn’t hurt a fly. I remembered seeing his slumped-over
shoulders and how motionless he had sat in the chair. No wonder he was so distressed. He must have
been framed. I started to become outraged at who exactly had done this terrible thing to him, who had
made him so sad that he would have to sit there and feel such pain.
    Wow. I sat straight up in bed. When was the last time I had ever thought about someone so intently?
I couldn’t remember. I had never been fixated on someone like this before. I felt the lump return in my
throat. I searched for an answer. It had to be because I was so stricken by his pain. I felt genuinely
awful for him having to be locked behind those bars. And then in my mind, Emry Logan suddenly
looked up at me and his blue eyes fixated on my own tiny brown eyes and remained there. I tried to
remember the striking color as they lured me in.
Emry Logan. “Emry Logan,” I whispered, allowing myself to speak his name in the darkness. It
sounded like music rolling off of my tongue.
     
“Goodnight, dear.” I realized at once my mother had my door cracked open and was peering in at
me.
     
“Night!” I blurted out, immediately embarrassed and falling back down in the bed, my head
indenting into the pillow.
     
Had she heard me say his name? I held my breath for a moment, listening to my heart. No, I
decided. She hadn’t. It had barely been a whisper.
    My head was spinning from the emotions. I felt remorseful. I was being secretive. I usually told my
family everything, but I couldn’t tell them I was thinking about one of the inmates that I had met today,
well, sort of met. My mind jumped ahead to tomorrow morning, getting up and going to work in my
mother’s antique store, and suddenly, I felt as if I didn’t really care. Work sounded boring. When had
I ever really been bored with my life before? Never bored, always content , I thought. But there were
other people out in the world, exciting people that fascinated me, like Emry Logan. I was absolutely
intrigued but couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I wondered what he would be doing down in his
jail cell at this exact moment. Would he be sleeping? Perhaps he was reading a book. Maybe he was
sitting on that chair again, his mind drifting, his mood depressed and sad.
    No, that’s no good. I immediately shook the thought from my head. He didn’t wear sad well. His
kind of sad made me feel sad. He deserved to be happy. My eyes snapped back open and moved to
the white ceiling above my head. My eyes traced around the outline of the stationary ceiling fan. What
was the matter with me? I felt so alive. A funny feeling filled the pit of my stomach. I felt like such a
child. This was absolutely silly. I’m a grown woman thinking of ways to help a criminal escape from
a prison I didn’t believe he deserved to be in, but I didn’t know that for sure. It was exhilarating, this
feeling. I smiled at the way I felt, then I shut my eyes tight, pulled the covers up over my head and
forced my mind to be empty to try to get some sleep. Every time I tried, there stood Emry Logan again.

Chapter 2
    The next few weeks seemed to drag on, especially since it rained almost every single day. I glared
at the gray clouds hovering above my head and cursed them as I wished they would go away. The air
was getting colder as winter approached and soon snow would cover all of Seneca. I wanted to enjoy
the remains of autumn. It was my favorite season after all, the red and gold leaves. However, this
nasty weather had made the leaves turn straight to brown and fall off the trees in a hurry. The wind
continuously whipped them in spiral swirls on the ground.
    It had been almost a month since my notorious jail visit. My parents hadn’t brought it up again. My
memory of the morning had gone from front burner in my mind to back as I busied myself with
Christmas choir practice,