Emma and the Minotaur Read Online Free PDF Page A

father because he was always comforting when one of Emma’s moods snuck up on her, but she didn’t want to give him the note from Miss Robins or tell him about her two strikes.
    Emma checked the clock on the wall and made a decision. She went to the closet beside the front door and put on a yellow raincoat and a pair of red boots. There was a flashlight hanging on the wall and she grabbed it and put it into one of the coat’s oversized pockets.
    She opened the front door and went out on the street in the rain. For a moment, she stood there and looked up to the sky and felt the cool raindrops as they fell on her face. She decided that being in the rain was nowhere near as bad as sitting inside watching it.
    There were many puddles and potholes on Belle Street and Emma jumped into most of them as she made her way down the street and onto Lockhart Road.
    To get to the University of Saint Martin, Emma could walk down Lockhart to Glendale Avenue and then turn right, straight up The Hill, but the journey would be shorter if she cut through the forest. She wasn’t allowed in the woods after dark, but she figured that having the flashlight with her meant that it wouldn’t be all that dark in there. Not really.
    When she reached the edge of the forest, she took the flashlight out of her pocket, pushed the switch, and peered into the darkness of the trees. She stood for a moment and listened to the whisper of the wind among the leaves and the dripping of the rain.
    When she was satisfied that it was perfectly safe, Emma went in under the trees. The wet leaves underneath her feet made squishing noises as she walked.
    Emma found that she wasn’t getting nearly as wet in there as she had been outside the cover of the trees. A clear indication that cutting through the forest had been a good idea.
    Some moments later, her flashlight started to fail.
    The flashlight blinked off and on twice before its light became dim. Without knowing why they did it, Emma tapped the back end of it with her palm like she had seen grown-ups do. It didn’t work. She didn’t want to be stuck in the forest if the light went out, so she tried to judge if it would be faster to go on or to turn around and go back.
    Before Emma could make up her mind, there was movement ahead that gave her pause. It had only been a shadowy blur among the trees but it had startled her.
    “Deer?” she said and shone her light toward where the motion had been, but she saw nothing.
    She took another step forward and the shadow moved again. It didn’t look like a deer.
    “Mr Milligan?” she said and backed away. There was no response. She kept her eye on the shadow and continued to back away slowly, now and then turning her head to look behind.
    Lightning flashed and she saw a man with horns.
    Emma turned and ran as thunder struck.
    She was afraid to look back in case the horned man was chasing her. She ran into a branch and its leaves slapped at her face. There was a rotten tree trunk in her way that she saw at the last moment. She managed to jump over it, though she almost slipped and fell when she landed on the other side of it.
    Emma's mad dash soon brought her out of the forest. She saw the light of a street lamp as she slipped on wet leaves and tumbled forward. Her momentum carried her out onto the road where she landed hard on hands and knees. The flashlight broke into three pieces and the batteries flew away.
    “Okay,” Emma said, “that was dumb. It probably was a stupid deer.”
    She crawled to the side of the road and sat down. Her jeans were torn. Her hands and knees were bleeding. On top of how she was already feeling, she now felt silly. The bright side of it was, she thought, that if she showed up to see her father looking like that then he might take it easy on her.
    She stood up and turned down the road toward The Hill. The wind and the rain beat at her face and pulled at her coat. She walked along the forest for a couple of minutes until it gave way to