Filed to story: My Life with the Walter Boys Book (I & II) PDF Free
“I guess, but your family is really overwhelming, and I just want everyone to forget about dinner.”
“Tomorrow will be easier, okay? I’ll see you in the morning before school.”
“Oh, great,” I moaned and flopped back onto my pillow. “School.” I was so caught up in the dinner disaster that I almost forgot that I would be going to a public school for the first time in my life.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a yawn. Griping his elbow, Cole stretched his arm out over his head and I quickly looked away from his rippling muscles. “It will be a breeze.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said, tugging my mother’s locket back and forth across the chain. “I’ve gone to the same boarding school since I was eleven. The thought of a public school scares me.”
“I promise you’ll do fine.” Cole chuckled as he stepped out into the hall. “Night, Jackie.”
“Good night, Cole,” I responded. Suddenly, a thought ran through my head.
“Wait,” I called just as he was about to shut the door. “Who’s Erin?”
Cole paused before responding. “Just a friend.”
When he shut the door, I held my breath and listened to him leave. A few seconds later, I heard his feet pound down the stairs.
Then, “Hey, Erin.”
I was so surprised to hear Cole again that I nearly fell out of my bed.
“Cole,” a girl responded, her voice smoky. “You said you were going to call me.”
I glanced around the room, looking for the source of the voices. There were three windows, and I realized why Katherine had picked this room for her art studio. It gave her a handful of different views to paint. The window on the front side of the house was pushed open.
“Yeah,” Cole said. “Something came up. Sorry.”
Pushing back the curtain, I looked down and saw Cole standing on the front porch. The front door was still open, and the light from inside poured into the night, outlining his body in a yellow glow.
“Are we still on for tonight?” asked Erin. She was standing a few steps down, and with her back to me, all I could see were long legs and a high ponytail.
Cole paused. “It’s late.”
Erin crossed her arms. “Fine, but no excuses tomorrow. You can’t keep bailing on me. I miss you.”
“Okay.”
“You promise?” she asked. Cole nodded his head. “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Cole stood on the porch and watched as Erin walked to her car. When the headlights disappeared down the dark driveway, I expected Cole to go back inside. Instead, he stepped off the porch and made his way across the front walk. He was heading for what looked like a shed.
When he unlatched the lock and pulled back the double doors, I realized that it was a second garage. After flipping on a light switch, he shut the doors. I waited for a few minutes, but he didn’t come back out. Finally I gave up and crawled into bed, but I couldn’t stop wondering. What the heck was Cole doing out there?
Chapter 3
I was in the car with my family. My dad and mom were in the front seat, and Lucy was sitting next to me in the back. We were sharing a set of headphones and jamming out to one of our favorite songs. When it came to an end, I smiled and looked out the window. It was one of those crisp, sunny spring days that let you know that winter was almost over. A small green haze that was almost invisible surrounded the tree branches as new buds started to push forth.
I looked down in surprise as my seat belt suddenly slid off. “What the…?” I muttered to myself and clicked it back in. A sinking feeling formed in my stomach when the buckle clicked undone again. Before I could push it back in, an invisible force yanked me from the car.
Now I was standing on the concrete. The trees on both sides of the road had shriveled up, and the sky darkened to an ominous gray. Our car sped by, and I caught a glimpse of Lucy staring out the back window at me.
“Wait, stop!” I cried and started to sprint down the street.
But the car didn’t stop. I watched in horror as a mile down the road the pavement started to crumble apart. When the road split in two, our car drove right off the edge and the earth swallowed my family up.
Panting, I sat straight up in bed with a thick layer of sweat covering my body. As my vision adjusted to the dark, dread built up inside me at the sight of unfamiliar surroundings. I kicked the covers off and stepped onto the cold, hard floor. For a moment, I was confused because my room didn’t have a wooden floor. Where was the carpet?
I searched in the dark for the light switch, and when I flipped it on, the mural on the walls lit up around me. The shock of reality hit me so hard that my knees buckled and I crumbled to the ground in a heap. I wasn’t at home in New York. I was in Colorado.
It was a dream. I had only been dreaming about the accident.
When it happened, I wasn’t with them. Instead, I had been lying on the couch, sick with the flu. I remember being tucked into a cocoon of blankets, trying to sleep away the shivers. As the morning slipped by, I drifted in and out of consciousness, and my family must have disappeared from existence sometime then.
At some point, the phone started ringing, but I felt too awful to answer. It continued to ring all afternoon long, until finally there was a knock on the front door and I was forced to get up. When the police officer told me what had happened to my family, my stomach reacted before I could process anything. I bent over, hands to my knees, and emptied onto the floor the small amount of hot chocolate I’d been able to sip that morning.
I didn’t understand how Lucy could be gone. She had always gone a step beyond being an older sister. The night before, when I came down with the flu, she’d held my hair and rubbed soothing circles across my back as I cried into the toilet. And my mother—she had been the strongest woman I knew. At the time, it didn’t make sense that she was dead.
But she was. They all were.
Ever since that day—ninety-four days, to be exact—I’d been dreaming about them. My father was the famous CEO of Howard Investment Corporation, so their car accident played on the news in loops, a constant reminder that they were gone. I still couldn’t get the image out of my head of our car, which had been crunched up into a ball as if it were nothing more than aluminum foil. It was as if every detail was seared into my brain, like when you look away from the sun after staring too long and it starts multiplying across the sky in vivid colors.
Minutes passed as my chest heaved up and down, until finally I was able to gain control of my breathing. I picked myself up and glanced at the clock—5:31 a.m.
I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, so I went to my dresser. After finding my workout clothes, I pulled on a pair of athletic shorts, grabbed my running shoes, and unhooked my iPod from its charger. It was early and I was exhausted from my nightmare, but I needed a distraction.
Normally I worked out on one of the treadmills in our family’s gym, but the Walters didn’t have a gym—or even a treadmill, for that matter. Running outside would have to do. The sun was creeping into the sky, and a cool breeze swept across my neck as I stepped out onto the rickety, wooden porch. The morning dew sparkled on the lawn as I sat down to tie my shoelaces before stretching.
As I stretched, butterflies knotted up in my stomach. I couldn’t tell if they were left over from my nightmare or if I was nervous about my upcoming day. The prospect of going to a new school made me feel sick. I had only been in the Walter household for a day, and so far it was awful. I couldn’t imagine going to a public school with hundreds of boys—eleven plus Parker was bad enough.
It was already nearing the end of the school year, and I was positive that I wouldn’t make a single friend. I found myself wishing it were already three in the afternoon, so I could shut myself in my room and curl up under the covers.
Just as I was about to take off, the screen door screeched open as George stepped out. Will and Cole were right behind him, and they were all dressed in work clothes: jeans, old T-shirts that had faded from white to cream, boots, and hats to protect them from the sun.
“Morning, Jackie,” George said and tipped his hat at me. Will waved and offered me a friendly smile.