ARC: Crushed Read Online Free PDF Page B

did nothing to lessen her rage. If anything, it gave it time to build.
    “What the hell were you thinking ?” Jo demands, hands on her hips. Her face is already flushed and working itself up to a magnificent shade of red. “ How could you? ”
    Murder Colton? Happily and with pleasure. But I do not say so. Jo-lectures are quicker and less painful if I keep my mouth shut.
    Yeah, no, this is definitely not my first. I’m becoming a bit of an expert.
    She rants and raves and punches the air, while I fight the urge to make gabby hands every time she turns her back.
    It’s not that I don’t want to be good – I do. For my mom, for Uri, for Jo (when I don’t want to kill her). Not to mention, the Crusaders are the only thing standing between me and the demon hordes who want me dead. It’s just Jo’s and my definitions of “good” are about as similar as an Eskimo’s and a Jamaican’s definitions of “cold”.
    She rounds on me. “Well?” she demands, hands on hips. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” She looks at me expectantly.
    “Gee you’re pretty when you’re angry.” I duck just in time to avoid the pencil sharpener she hurls at my head. I hold my hands up before she can launch another missile “I’m kidding, I’m kidding!”
    She clenches her fists.
    “You actually get really, really red and kind of blotch–”
    She makes an enraged roar that sounds like it was supposed to be my name and dives for me.
    I scramble towards the bed, but she manages to grab my ankle and I land face down. Something hard digs into my stomach, and I reach under and haul out a DVD. Titanic . I didn’t put it there.
    At the sight of it Jo pauses in her attempted homicide.
    Oh.
    Oh, crap.
    The events of the evening all become clear.
    She must have snuck over to watch the movie once everyone was in bed – about the same time I was waiting for to make my escape. Then she found me gone.
    She’s almost always busy these days. Off with Chi, or squeezing in extra training, or in the infirmary because she destroyed her leg in practice. It doesn’t exactly help our relationship as the only time I see her is when she pulls herself away to lecture me.
    Except, of course, the last time we watched a movie.
     
    “Ta-da!” she says. I take that as my cue and open my eyes. Dominating the top of my dresser is a boxy television, and sitting next to it is a real, honest-to-goodness DVD player.
    I hug it. It is my squishy and my squishy it will be.
    Jo laughs. I look at her like the miracle worker she is.
    “I thought you might like it.” She says with satisfaction. “I explained to Headmaster Reinhart how you stay in your room in the evenings in order to keep a low profile…”
    Blatantly untrue, which she knows. I stay in my room because I haven’t anything better to do.
    “…and he agreed that maybe you should have something to pass the time.” Then her nose wrinkles, and she grabs a flat DVD case off the top of the TV, looking at it. “All the movies we watch have to be approved, but it’s better than nothing.” She shrugs.
    I grin. It’s way better than nothing.
    She grins back, and points to my desk. “And of course – popcorn.”
    Jo slips the movie in and we settle down. The movie’s pretty terrible, some kind of rom-com with a perky heroine dumber than any extra in a horror flick. It’s still better than nothing, and, anyway, I laugh at the main character as if it were all comedy.
    After a while, I notice that Jo’s not laughing with me. She’s not really watching the TV and the bowl of popcorn sits nearly untouched on her lap. She catches me looking. She forces a half-smile and makes an effort to watch the movie. But she has that strained look in her eye that always seems to sit there these days.
    “What?” I ask her.
    She shrugs like it’s nothing, but I don’t turn away.
    “Do you ever…” Jo starts, then shakes her head. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”
    “Do I ever what?”
    She doesn’t