Astray Read Online Free PDF Page B

myself. “I’ll just fake it until it happens.”
    I run my hands down the sides of my jeans to try to get rid of the moisture on my palms.
    “Stop fidgeting, Lyla!” Taylor says. It comes out sounding more like “Op idgeting, I-ya,” because she has a dozen bobby pins pressed between her lips.
    She grabs a thin section of my hair and begins to braid it. I watch her in the dresser’s mirror before studying thework she’s already completed on my face. I don’t look like me. My lips are all glossy pink and my eyes have these expertly smudged lines of dark brown around them. It’s like staring at a stranger, someone straight out of my best friend, Marie’s, contraband magazine collection.
    Marie
.
    Thinking about my best friend sends my stomach churning. She should be the one getting this makeover, especially since she would have appreciated it so much more. She should be going to school today too. She should still be alive. For a moment the thought of it, of her never getting the chance to have this day, overwhelms me and I can’t breathe.
    “Okay, I’d say you’re ready. And looking rather hot, if I do say so myself.” Taylor takes a step back to admire her work, and a slow grin spreads across her face.
    I stare at my reflection and tug at the snug sweater she harassed me into wearing.
Am I ready?
I’ve never had a first day at school, at least not one I can remember. Pioneer taught us all of our subjects in the clubhouse. The high school will be huge in comparison to our tiny room there.
Can I navigate a maze of hallways and kids I’ve never met before?
    “School starts in half an hour!” Cody’s mom calls up the stairs, her voice full of forced brightness. I can almost picture her standing at the base of the stairs, wringing her hands together the way she does every morning. She’s big on being on time. It must be killing her that no oneis downstairs yet, but she won’t fuss—probably because she’s already guessed how nervous I am.
    Taylor groans and heads downstairs. I hurry over to my bed and grab the worn leather shoulder bag that used to be my dad’s back when he worked as a structural engineer in New York, before my sister went missing and we moved out here with Pioneer. I’m using it as a book bag. He gave it to me at our last counseling session. It’s the first present he’s given me on his own … ever. He’d left a little note inside. “
Be strong. Don’t lose yourself.
” Even now I’m not sure what he meant, especially after seeing him at Pioneer’s transfer. I want it to mean that I’m supposed to stay strong against Pioneer, but it’s more likely that it means stay strong against all the Outsiders.
    There’s a small click from the hallway and then a brief flash of light. Cody’s standing in the bedroom doorway with his cell phone in front of his face. His grin is so wide that the phone almost seems to rest on it.
    “You look … wow.” He pulls me into his arms. I remind myself to stay loose, not to stiffen.
He’s allowed to hug me. I want him to. Pioneer isn’t watching
.
    “Where are you on the nervous scale?” he asks against my hair. I close my eyes and lean into his chest so that I can hear his heart and feel the warmth radiating off him.
    “Um, about a ten point five.”
    “Thought you might be.” He frowns for a second, but then his face brightens. “Would it help if you wore this?”
    Cody steps back and points to the T-shirt he’swearing—the one he had on when we met. It reminds me of him more than anything else.
    “You’d let me wear it?”
    “I wouldn’t offer it up unless I wanted you to,” he says.
    I nod and he ducks out of it, then hands it to me. His chest is lean and tight, defined in every place it should be, and there’s a small constellation of freckles on his left shoulder. Every time I see it, I have to fight the urge to trace it with my fingers. I’m pretty sure that if I did, I’d figure out that they make a perfect Little