Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
“Okay, we need reinforcements,” Mom realizes in a quick, panting breath. “Lo! Lo! LOREN HALE GET YOUR BUTT UP HERE!!” Her panicked words in a scream do the trick.
Footsteps pound harder than my heart, and more than just my dad appears.
“Jesus, Lily,” Dad says, fear encasing my mom’s name. He’s already racing into my bedroom, along with my brothers and Farrow.
They all ram the bookcase against the wall. Xander uses his shoulder like Kinney had been. The structure thunks against the plaster and then stays eerily motionless.
As the dust silently settles and I’m still here among broken mugs and thrown books—I’m not invisible; I haven’t dusted yet—their eyes veer around the destruction and onto me.
The source.
I’m…ashamed.
I’ve never shown my pain like Kinney, and it’s too loud and exposed.
“I’ll get a broom,” Mom says with a hearty nod, beelining for the door. “Everything’s going to be okay, Luna!” She shouts super quickly on her way into the hall. Moffy follows in a jog and says something about Ripley being in his highchair.
I blink repeatedly like I’ll finally inherit teleportation. My mom says it could’ve skipped several generations, and we truly don’t know whether Great Grandma Pearl had superpowers or not. She died before I was born, but Dad always disputed the idea and said the woman never left Palm Beach.
To which, Mom replied, that we know of.
I like my mom’s imaginative version of Great Grandma Pearl—a superpowered woman who explored the world without anyone ever suspecting. I picture happy wrinkles around her wide smile while she’s riding a moped in Florence with a hot Italian hunk. In the next hour, she’s sipping tea in London by her awesome self, then she’s exploring the Pyramids in Cairo with her sister Margot and ferrying along the Golden Horn in Istanbul.
Charlie said it’s one of his favorite ferry rides, and I’m still surprised he answered me when I asked him about the best ferries in the world.
So in this moment of my life, I am blinking and blinking and hoping Great Grandma Pearl’s teleportation existed and that it finally transfers to me.
Please.
I don’t know how to recover from destroying my childhood room. My parents could’ve turned this space into another office or gym. Instead, they preserved it for me.
That’s how good they are.
How kind.
And how dumb I am—to ruin it. Over what? Throwing my books isn’t going to bring him back!
“What the hell happened?” my dad asks, out of breath. The sharpness of his gaze cuts from me to my sister.
Kinney is waiting for me to explain. To share what I never shared with her: the details.
I bring the collar of my hoodie up to my eyes. My chest is being crushed with a weight heavier than the bookcase. Turning away from them, I go towards my bed and trip over the comics I’d thrown.
My knees hit the floor.
Farrow bends down, his arms around me while I crumple. A gnarled sound I’ve never heard myself make suddenly ruptures out of my lungs, and I choke on a scream.
The scream morphs into me crying into my hoodie.
I hate this feeling that claws at me. I hate it so much.
Knelt behind me, Farrow has a calming hand on my neck. He might be my brother’s husband, but he’s been a friend to me—and it’s nice…it is really nice having him here. Once he whispers for me to breathe deep breaths, my cries die like a wounded bird going motionless, and I try to take a lungful of air.
I rub at my splotchy, hot cheeks and fight the urge to hide in my hoodie.
“It has to be her fics, right?” Xander asks softly. “It’s going to be okay, Luna.”
My dad looks distraught seeing me in this much pain, but I’m avoiding his daggered eyes more than anyone. I just can’t…
It’s going to be okay, Luna.
I shake my head slowly.
“I know…” Xander stammers for the words. “I know it feels like it never will be.”
I lift my anguished gaze to my seventeen-year-old brother. Xander Hale isn’t a supernova in my sky. He’s not Eliot or Tom or even Moffy. He’s my little brother who was stuck inside a decrepit, often dusty and darkened castle, and if anyone knows the roadmap out of that awful place, it’d be him.
Chunky red headphones rest around his neck, and pieces of his shaggy brown hair touch the lashes of his expressive amber eyes. It’s hard to look away.
“I know you don’t want to be here…” Xander tells me. “But you have to ignore that voice. Not forever. Just ignore it this minute, this shitty second.”
This minute.
This second.
I inhale slowly.
“Small hurdles, you know?” Xander says quietly. “You can do that. I know you can, sis. You’re way stronger than me.”
Hot tears fall in a blink because I don’t think I ever have been. I think sometimes I’m the weakest of the entire Hale family. Or maybe, I’m just the hardest on myself, but how can I even be certain that’s true?