Chaos (Kardia Chronicles) (Entangled Teen) Read Online Free PDF

of a “why you have two daddies” talk.
    I couldn’t recall it word for word, but it went something like, You’re a semi-god, same as your gram and me. We’re distant descendants of gods and their human mates. The change starts on your seventeenth birthday, but apparently you’re an early bloomer. I didn’t want to be a semi anymore, so I took my ball and went home— apparently that’s allowed?— and that’s what I want you to do, too. So let’s all ignore the fact that your body is being ripped apart by some strange, awful need, and once your change is complete, I’ll teach you how to make it go away. Sort of. How long will it take? Five years. Ten on the outside. If you don’t, it only gets stronger and will never go dormant. Insert brittle smile here. Strudel?
    Strudel.
    My mother’s answer to all of life’s problems. Every bad thing that ever happened to me was followed by strudel. My father’s death? Strudel. When we had to move out of our old house to a cheaper one down the street because we couldn’t afford it anymore? Strudel. I wanted to rabbit-punch strudel in the testicles but hug it at the same time because it was Mom’s way of trying to make me feel better when she didn’t know how. And she definitely didn’t know how after the whole floaty-bed exorcist thing.
    Her explanation had been shit, but even still, a part of me was relieved. I mean, the list of things it could have been was pretty short and all of the options were bad except one. Either I hadn’t floated at all and was having some sort of mental flip-out, I was possessed by Satan—I gotta say, this was the worst of all the choices in my book—or I’d been bitten by a radioactive something or other and was now a superhero. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wicked stoked about that last one. But when she told me the truth—or the little sliver of it she’d been willing to share—I think I blacked out some.
    From the outside looking in, maybe it seems like a blessing. A semi-god. Seems cool in theory, but it’s actually not that cool. The things I can do aren’t things any good person would want to do. I can’t fly. I can’t heal—myself or anyone else. I can’t turn peas into chocolate. Even the thing with the buckling metal on my locker and the whole levitating on the bed show were flukes…just random outlets for the overabundance of energy building inside me mixed with anger. I couldn’t really do any of it on command. So far, the only interesting thing I seem to be able to do is extract sometimes vague information from living things through touch.
    Oh yeah, and hurt, maim, and kill with that same touch.
    Not exactly tricks that win you friends or anything. The worst part was that I didn’t know how to control it in any reliable way. I kind of had to push down with my insides to squash it, but it was exhausting. Like holding my breath underwater, only forever.
    Then there’s the need. Because, as the screwed-up descendant of the goddess of love, taking from people—sucking the love from them into me—gives me a feeling of fullness. Like if I was starving and someone gave me a bowl of beef stew with a hunk of crusty bread to dunk in it. It made me warm all over. Filled up. Satisfied.
    Only one person outside my family knew what was going on, and that was Libby. I sometimes wondered why she didn’t hate me for it. I sometimes hated me for it.
    I sat up, snatched my laptop from the nightstand, and plopped it onto my lap. One other great thing about the column… It was a distraction when my own shit got too real. I grabbed my headphones and slapped them over my ears, cranking my iPhone to head splitting.
    Don’t think. Don’t think.
    I closed my eyes and focused on the thumping bass, forcing myself to push the thoughts of my grandmother and Mom and Mac and semis out of my head and let the riot inside me calm.
    It took a while before I could even unclench my fists, but when I did, I logged onto the e-mail I used