Echoes Read Online Free PDF Page A

clear my head lately. I saw you in front of Helen’s. Then I went around the block once and headed for home. I saw that woman with the knife and I intervened—”
    “Intervened,” I repeated.
    “That’s right. Anyone would have done the same thing. It’s no big deal.”
    “It’s a huge deal.”
    “If you say so. I saw someone in trouble and I tried to help. I disarmed the woman and she and the man ran back to their car, or wherever they came from.”
    I shook my head. “No, you fought with them. You—you
stabbed them
.” I whispered it. “And then they—”
    “And then they what? Then they disappeared in a flash of fire?”
    “Yes!”
    “Come on, Olivia. That sounds kind of crazy, don’t you think? I probably wouldn’t share that theory with anyone. Wouldn’t want to spend your summer vacation locked up in a mental ward, would you?”
    That was why I hadn’t told anyone yet. I knew how insane it sounded. “I don’t understand why you won’t tell me the truth. It’s obvious you know more than you’re letting on.”
    “You’re entitled to your opinion, of course. It’s time for me to go now.” He eyed me. “Are you going to try to stop me?”
    “I might.”
    “People are going to start gossiping. The popular Olivia Hawthorn cornering the loser Ethan Cole after first class. It’s fairly scandalous.”
    I stared at him incredulously. “You think this is funny?”
    “Hilarious, obviously.” But he wasn’t smiling.
    “I nearly got stabbed in the heart and you’re trying to pretend it was nothing.”
    “I do that a lot.”
    “What?”
    “Pretend.” There was a bitter edge to his voice. “Okay, listen to me, Olivia, and please try your best to hear me. What happened last night was nothing. You don’t owe me anything for it. You don’t have to talk to me, be nice to me, or even acknowledge my existence. Got it? All I want you to do is forget about it. Go back to your regularly scheduled life. Can you do that?”
    I gripped my binder tighter to my chest. “You’re saying that you want me to leave you alone.”
    “Pretty much.”
    I moved a step closer to him and I noticed that his expression soured and he pressed further back against the wall as if to try to escape me. He didn’t like being around me, that was obvious. Maybe it was because I’d ignored him and made him feel like a loser for so long, even though it hadn’t been on purpose. It wasn’t as if he’d made much of an effort to come out of his shell all of these years.
    The bell rang for next class and the remaining kids in the hall scattered.
    “Well?” Despite working very hard at keeping space between us, he hadn’t broken our staring contest. I continued to gaze into his eyes hoping to see the truth down in those coppery depths. It was surprisingly difficult to look away.
    “Right,” I finally said. “You want to go to class.”
    “That would be nice.”
    “Not until you tell me why those people caught fire and disappeared.”
    He hissed out a frustrated sigh. “Olivia—”
    “I know what I saw. And I know you know more than you’re letting on, otherwise you’d be as shocked at what happened as I am. And you’re not shocked at all. This is major, Ethan. And we’re in this together now.”
    He pushed at his hair again as if it was being as much of a nuisance as I was. “Just let it go.”
    “Even if they were purposely lit on fire, they’d leave a body behind, a burned up husk or something. But there was nothing. And there was no smell, either. A burning person would have, like, a cooking meat smell.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Morbid.”
    “But there was no body. No smell. Just a mark on the ground, as if they’d vanished into thin air.”
    “Well...it was really dark last night. And you
had
been drinking.” He shrugged as if that explained everything.
    I looked at him with surprise. “How do you know that?”
    His gaze moved to my mouth for a second. “I could smell the strawberries and vodka.