Distraction: The Distraction Trilogy #1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

label,” comes a sweet and unsure voice from behind me.
    I turn and stare at the young girl with a basket full of junk food hanging over her arm. “Eloise.”
    “Yep.” She pops the P and I watch her mouth move as she chews on a wad of chewing gum. Her full lips are glistening with moisture from recently wetting them with her tongue. “She always drank the one with the beige label. Always.”
    “Thank you,” I say and place the one I grabbed back onto the shelf.
    “No problem.” She starts walking and I fight the urge to catch up to her. I fight the urge to ask her yet again how she’s doing. An accident like the one she so narrowly avoided has to have shaken her up a little, yet she seems calm about it. Although it was a month ago.
    Why am I still hanging on to it?
    Maybe because I’m shaken up about the fact that I came very close to witnessing a young girl’s death.
    How old is she? Seventeen maybe? She doesn’t look it, but then again, most girls in their teens don’t look like teens in this day and age.
    “You might want to get a few bottles,” she calls, stopping at the end of the aisle and flipping her hair over her shoulder. It’s a really nice shade of red and I can’t help but wonder if it’s bottle dyed. I found myself wondering this in class earlier too. I’ve seen ginger hair, but this colour can’t be named as such. It’s not bright orange, but more of a subtle, deep red that seems to switch colours in the light. It falls in loose waves to the top of her shoulders. I can tell she probably braids it at night to make it that way. No way are those waves natural; they’re too perfectly formed.
    “Sorry?” I ask, blinking myself free of my thoughts and meeting her hazel eyes.
    “Get her a few bottles. She drinks that stuff like its water.”
    “Right,” I murmur, mentally kicking myself for forgetting this fact whilst piling five more bottles into the basket. My mum has always had an unhealthy obsession with cloudy lemonade, but I never paid enough attention to this when I lived at home, hence the fact I don’t even know what brand she drinks. “How do you…” She’s gone when I look up and my question trails off. “Know?”
    It seems Eloise is an observant character.
    I make my way to the tills and then make my way home, home being the place my mum is, not the place I’m staying.
     
    Mum is prattling about in the kitchen when I enter the home in which I grew up. I place the bags filled with the lemonade bottles on the side and clear my throat to alert her that I’m in the room.
    She blinks when she looks at me, seemingly confused over my presence in her kitchen, but fortunately snaps out of it and thanks me with a kiss on each cheek before putting the bottles away.
    “Will you stay for dinner?” She asks, checking the clock on the wall above the counter.
    “I’ve already eaten, but thank you.”
    “How was day one?”
    Good question. “Interesting. You’re right about the year tens. They’re all way too bored.”
    “This town needs more to do; the streets aren’t safe for them to play in like you used to.”
    I nod my agreement before finally asking the question I’ve wanted to ask but haven’t dared. “So… how are you feeling, in yourself?”
    Mum stops in her tracks, a rolled up plastic carrier bag in her fist. I watch her eyes become dull and her brows crease with a frown. “I’m not sure how to feel.” She smiles suddenly and places the bag into the holder that’s pinned to the side of the counter near the tiled floor. “I’m glad you’re home. I feel good about that.”
    My jaw clenches as an unbearable feeling of sorrow consumes me. I clear my throat to rid myself of the lump that seems to be stuck there. “I’m glad to be home too.”
    “I’m not too sick to know a lie when I hear one,” she teases and pinches my cheek after turning back towards me. “Regardless, I know you’ve missed us and I know you love us as we love you and that’s all