Break Away (Away, Book 1)
Read Break Away (Away, Book 1) Online
Authors: Tatiana Vila
Tags: #romance, #urban fantasy, #adventure, #mystery, #paranormal romance, #fantasy, #young love, #young adult series
Tatiana Vila
Published by Tatiana Vila at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Tatiana Vila
Cover art by Kizuna-chan
Book cover design by Tatiana Vila
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales
is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
For Heidi, Jessica and Luija.
Thank you for being in my life.
There are some people who live in a dream
world,
and there are some who face reality; and
then
there are those who turn one into the
other.
Desiderius Erasmus
N
ot watching the
news today was as hard to resist as sinful white chocolate in my
hands. My eyes were already fixed on the white letters gliding on
the red band at the bottom of the screen.
Brazilian man steals plane
and crashes it into a mall, killing himself and 5-year-old
son
.
“Jeez,” I sighed with a sense of voidance in
my chest. “Wasn’t enough to steal the plane already?” I arched my
eyebrows, angling some of the snarky attitude towards the unknown,
out-of-his mind man. Dad had been right. The world was getting
crazier each day. That’s why my fingers stilled whenever my mind
shot the command to press the two buttons that led to CNN.
Only today, my fingers seemed to be on a
rebellious streak.
“Nope,” I continued. “Crashing a plane into
a mall full with innocent people and killing your son in the
process isn’t apparently enough.” But it wasn’t worse than
colliding commercial airplanes against two major buildings in
Manhattan and killing almost three thousand innocent people.
I remembered watching through the crystal
screen the horrifying images of the Twin Towers falling to dust. A
ghostly, pale shattering dust. My whole body went cold, wiping out
the fever blazing in my forehead that morning. The first thought
that flashed into my seven-year-old mind was: war. And then, “Oh
no…I'm going to live through a world war like Granny”.
I mean, what else was I supposed to think
when everything seems to be solved with guns and bombs? I almost
fell to the living room floor right there.
Dad was beside me, though. His big, soothing
hand found mine and grasped it in a strong, comforting grip.
“Everything is okay, Dafne, nothing will happen to you. Daddy is
here,” he said, wrapping his arms around my small body. I lost the
worry pricking in my heart and felt grateful. Happy. I had him and
Mom with me. I felt as if I could face anything, anytime.
As long as they were next to me
.
My throat clenched.
I looked aside. Nothing. Only empty air
drilling a deep hole in the side of the couch Dad used to take. I
turned back and dropped my watery eyes to my hands. They looked
pale, lifeless. They had the same cold shade as, well, two years
ago.
Two years
.
It looked as if my hands had been frozen in
time, waiting. Waiting for
them
and their soothing warmth,
the only one able to melt the unseen ice crusting my palms and
fingers.
“This was a bad idea,” I whispered with a
shaky voice. A small, crystal tear fell down on my slender finger.
I watched it slide down, tracing a damp trail on my skin until it
merged into the ice of my palm. I closed my hand and looked up.
Watching news was something I used to do with Dad. Since
that
dreadful day, I’d promised to myself I wouldn’t go back
to the morning routine. But sometimes, the deep hole in my chest
seemed to ask for it, as if only for a few seconds a thick, cozy
sensation filled the huge gap in my chest. Even if I knew that
afterwards, a sharp, burning feeling would deepen the hole.
“Breaking news,” the CNN anchor announced,
shaking me off from the hard waves pressing my chest. “Three people
have been hospitalized in Chicago after suddenly falling
unconscious at two separate locations in that city. The three are
reportedly in comas. Two, both teenagers, were watching a movie at
a local cinema when they unexpectedly fell unconscious, according
to officials. Around the same time, a twenty-eight-year-old female
collapsed at the Eckhart Park Library, exhibiting the same
symptoms. Officials have not confirmed a cause, but have ruled out
stroke, alcohol and drug use and injury.
“We’ll keep you informed as new developments
come in.” The man ended and looked down at a thin pile of sheets
between his hands, his face meaning business.
I turned off the TV and strode into the
kitchen. Gran was eating that nasty looking chunk she used to eat
every morning. It looked like mashed worms. Yuck. My curiosity
wasn’t big enough to ask her what it was. I was afraid to throw
up.
“Guten Morgen, Dafne,” she told me as I sat
down and grasped the cereal from the middle of the round table. I
didn’t know why she insisted on throwing German words at me instead
of simply saying “good morning.” But, hey, she was half-German.
Even though I didn’t like the language—it sounded like rocks were
stuck in people’s throat—it was part of Gran’s identity, and if
grating out harsh, guttural words made her happy, my dislikes came
at the bottom of the list.
“Hey, Gran.” I emptied some of the Oh’s into
a chipped black bowl. Looking at it sent a warm wave to my chest.
Everyone in the house knew I’d taken this bowl under my care—and I
say care because I was really fond of it. Ever since I’d seen it
all pushed down at the bottom of the cupboard behind newer, shiny
china, I’d claimed it as mine. My heart had squeezed at the
sight.
I knew that feeling sorry for a hollow piece
of ceramic, which had no heart or spirit whatsoever, was outright
ridiculous. But I did. I loved this bowl. Breakfast wouldn’t be the
same without it.
“I heard you watching the news,” Gran said
with a smile in her voice, a faint accent lacing her soft
words.
“I, uh, yeah.” I lowered my eyes, averting
them from her knowing stare. She had the ability to peel away
layers of skin with those eyes, often leaving one’s core uncovered.
And today wasn’t a good day to let that happen. “Where’s Aunt
Morgan?” I asked as fast as I could to change the subject.
“Oh, she had some tutoring half an hour
ago.”
“Another one?” I said, pouring some organic
milk over the yellowish loops. “That makes three new students this
week. How does she handle it with her classes and all?”
“One word honey: workaholic,” Gran said with
her pale eyebrows pulled up.
She was right. Aunt Morgan spent nearly
ninety percent of her time giving classes and tutoring on her spare
time at college. It was only about fifteen minutes away from our
house in the Historic Maple Hill in Berryford, Indiana. All the
houses around here used to creep me out when we came to visit Gran
on weekends while we still lived in Chicago. My mind couldn’t stop
flashing at me imagined ghosts when I spotted the old structures
haunting the edges of the street.
But watching the same landscape every single
day now—without ghostly shapes staring at me through old French
windows—helped a great deal. The idea of a ghost-free neighborhood
had finally branded into me.
“Where is your sister by the way?” Gran
said, looking around.
“Who knows?” I shoved the overloaded spoon
of Oh’s into my mouth. “Maybeburying hernose intoabook
orsomething.” I mumbled between crunches. I swallowed the sweet
mouthful and said, “Or maybe staring all dreamily at her closet,
watching that excessive heap of fabric and shoes she dares to call
‘fashion.’ Seriously, I can smell her brain frying from the
outfit-picking-exertion.”
“Don’t be so mean, Dafne.” Gran threw me a
disapproving look. “Clothes and books are your sister’s way
of…of”—
coping with Mom and Dad’s death?
—”…liberation,” she
finally said.
“Right.” I looked away from her, my throat
feeling swollen. At least she had a way to do it. Me? I had
nothing, only a bitchy attitude that had given me the title of ‘Ms.
Ice Queen’ at high school.
Was that my way to cope with my parents’
death? I had no idea. And frankly, I didn’t want to think about it.
Watching the news this morning had already broadened the gaping
hole in my chest.
“You should spend some more time with her,
Dafne. She needs your company, not your coldness—which I know is
pretense.”
I snorted. “Whatever, Gran.” And right away
felt guilty for the bitter words. Perhaps to the rest of the world
I could be Ms. Ice Queen, but to Gran, never. She was the only one
who could truly see through me.
“Sorry,” I sighed and looked into her baby
blues. “I promise I’ll try to be less
cold
with Buffy.”
“What’s up with me?” Buffy said as she
glided right behind me. She pulled out a Pop-Tarts box from the
pantry and turned to look at me. “I heard my name, so don’t play
the fool on me, sis.”
“I said Fluffy, not Buffy,” I lied, laying
my arm on the headrest of the chair so I could see her straight in
the eyes. “Talk about massive paranoia.”
“I may be
two minutes
younger than
you,” she placed her hands on her hips. “But I'm not stupid or
stone-deaf. Besides, do you think I’ll believe you were talking
about an old, smelly teddy bear? It’s insulting,” she scoffed.
Yeah. Buffy was my twin. Born on the same
day, in the same room, and on the same bed. Though we shared these
things together, we didn’t share the same physical architecture, or
the same emotional traits, or the same personality. The only thing
linking us in this life as twins was the day our wobbly forms had
come out of Mom’s pain-stricken body. Beyond that, nobody would
have suspected we were twins—or related even. We were opposites. An
electron and a positron. A yin and a yang.
Where she was cheerful and friendly, I was
indifferent and unfriendly. Where she was brown-eyed and blonde, I
was blue-eyed and
darkette
. Where she had a straight nose
and straight hips, I had a button nose and curvy hips. And where
she dressed all girly, I dressed all tomboyish—sexy tomboyish I
liked to think.
We were a walking contradiction.
“Actually, that crap of being stone-deaf and
all was true dear, Buffy,” I told her while looking at my midnight
blue nails.
“Dafne,” Gran said with a reproving voice.
“Mind the dirty language.”
I stopped checking my nail polish and turned
to look at her. “ ‘Crap
’
is the soft term for the ‘s’ word,
Gran.”
“Dafne,” she said in a sharper tone.
“Okay, okay. What I meant was that the
poop…”—
I glanced at Gran for her approval. She nodded, so I
continued—”…about you being severely hearing impaired was true. You
didn’t hear my heavenly voice when I called your name to the
heavens for breakfast minutes ago.”
“Oh, how could I’ve missed your sweet
voice?” She clasped her hands together in an overly dramatic way.
“Perhaps the deep knocks on my door, as in
let’s-throw-the-door-down deep, masked your calling!”
“Don’t turn all Buffy-the-vampire-slayer on
me,” I said to drive her over the edge. I knew she hated being
compared to the TV character. Everyone did it. Her name was a curse
for life, poor thing.
