Winter of Discontent (Four Seasons Book 1) Read Free Page A

us on a trip out to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. He had hired a secluded log cabin by a lakeside where Jared and I could swim and dive to our hearts content. We would run for hours at speeds that would have had Usain Bolt stuck in the starting blocks. It was great. Dad knew it was hard on us and I know he was proud of how we coped with things. I got a bit frustrated sometimes though when Dad wouldn’t use magic for anything at all. I remember one time, we spent the whole evening in darkness when a power surge blew out all the bulbs. It was too late to get into town for replacements and he wouldn’t use just the simplest of notions to fix them. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to see him. We lived away from close neighbours and had no one overlooking our property, but no, he wouldn’t do it and just insisted that we deal with it like any other normal family.
     
    Phys. Ed should really have been reclassified under the heading of Drama for me. I can’t tell you how many times I allowed myself to be convincingly fouled, to turn in last over the line and the odd ‘trip up’ over my own feet. Just once I would love to have been first but I had to resign myself to knowing that although I would win, I never could win. Today was basketball. Ryan Enders was captain of the squad and a real dick. I so wanted to smack him up a bit. He had slept with more senior girls than the rest of the squad put together and then bragged about it to anyone that would listen. I hated that. It wasn’t a Warlock thing to dislike his behaviour it was a family thing; there was nothing wrong with wanting a lot of sex but slagging the girls off afterwards wasn’t on. Nurture over nature you might say. Anyway, by the time we had warmed up and each had two quarters it was time to head home.
    As I walked back toward my locker, I sensed her again. Before I’d even turned the corner into the hallway I knew she was there. And she was. I’d spent most of Phys. Ed sidelined following a foul by one of the jocks and therefore sat brooding on the bench thinking how I’d love to have pushed him back, and when I wasn’t thinking about that I was thinking about her. I’d come to a decision. I was gonna smile back, speak even. I had to find out what it was about her that made me feel uneasy and I wasn’t gonna do that if I didn’t at least acknowledge her.
     
    I can’t really describe how this sense of heightened anxiety left me feeling. Sick to my stomach doesn’t really cover it, I’d never broken a sweat inside of school before but I could feel the back of my neck sticking to my shirt and it felt really uncomfortable. Relax, relax I repeated over and over to myself. This was alien territory for me. I may play the geek for the sake of camouflage but I wasn’t that person underneath. I was confident and assured; so why didn’t I feel like that? As I got closer to her I saw her turn toward me. She had beautiful long dark brown hair, almost to her waist. It had the tiniest hint of a wave and it bounced when she turned around quickly. She was hot! My realisation that that was my opinion made me think that perhaps Jared had been right; maybe I just had a hard-on for her. I’d never given any real thought to who I had sex with before so maybe feeling like this meant I had a crush on her. The possibility that it might be as simple as that was strangely reassuring.
     
    My locker was just over to the left from hers. As I unlocked the door and took out my books I purposely looked in her direction. I was gutted. She was stood with her back to me now and at such an angle, unless she moved, I wouldn’t be able to make eye contact. In my frustration, I slammed the door to the locker shut. The noise it made when it closed shocked most of the students into silence as they turned round to see what it was all about.
    ‘Oops. Don’t know my own strength,’ I said trying to laugh it off.
    You can imagine the comments that bought.