First Kiss Read Online Free PDF

night roll past us.
    Maggie squeezes my shoulders through the gap between the door
and the seat, "She's right." Her hand on me almost makes me believe
it.
    It doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t matter how much I ignore
it or how much I pretend it isn’t true, I’m a Lake. Everyone knows what that
means.
    Lune drops me off and I run up the old vine-covered path
quickly. I walk through the door quietly and set my guitar next to the stairs.
I put the fifty bucks, I get every week for singing,
on the desk.
    "What you been at, girl?" The haggard, mean, old
voice slips through the dark hallway. "Huh? Where you been?"
    I flinch and wait for the pain. I’m tight everywhere. I never
know where she’ll hit first. The hallway is too dark to see her. I shake my
head with a twitch and whisper, "Nowhere. Out with Lune after I made the
money."
    "You little slut. You're just like your momma.” It’s like
she’s stuck on repeat. She only ever says about seven sentences and she’s just
said four of them. She thinks my mom was evil; she doesn’t factor in that her
son was the Lake family member. My mother’s last name was something I don’t
recall.
    Pain hits in my belly first. I double over and heave as her
fist hits. I turtle and let her kick me. I close my eyes and wrap my fingers
around my head with my chin tucked. Her old boots stomp and kick until she’s
tired. It never lasts long. I taste my own blood in my mouth. My cheek stings
where she’s managed to get a boot in. My teeth hurt.
    She spits at me. I tremble and let her. I always let her. I
deserve every strike. She and I both know it. That, and I have nowhere else to
go. My father's will demanded I stay with her until my nineteenth birthday, or
I wouldn’t get my inheritance on my twentieth birthday. That is freedom.

 

 
    Chapter Two

 
    The dark night has a magical feeling. Even if I don’t believe
in magic, my face is swollen, and I’m exhausted, the night still feels like
magic to me. A boy I have always liked, told me he
liked me. Nothing Mary does can take away from that.
    Once she kicks my ass, my grandmother always goes to bed. She
watches TV infomercials and smokes. I have always wished long and hard for her
to fall asleep with the smoke in her mouth and burn the house down. Then I
could be free. Even if I were dead, I would be alive for the first time.
    I am so sick of being a Lake. For me death seems like an out,
but being a girl it’s unlikely I will be the one to die. The curse doesn’t care
about who has the Lake blood, only that there is love in a heart. The man
always dies, always. Even when he is the Lake. Being a
girl I must either escape my curse, live a life
separate of love, or kill myself.
    Killing myself has never really been an option.
    I sit in the window and wait for the only thing that matters.
Nothing matters—not the Lakes or the curses or the pain—just her. I
wait for the moment I can sense Rosie. I don’t always feel her, but when I do,
it’s like the noise and pain in the world stands still
for her. For us.
    The wide window seat is the only place in the world I can
still feel her. It isn’t like her ghost is there, but maybe a stain. She died
in the house and I always prayed     she would haunt it—me.
She never did though, not properly, but I will take her anyway I can get her. A
whisper in the wind on a window seat is better than nothing at all. The whisper
happened the first night after she died. I had sat in the window crying for
twenty-four hours straight, when suddenly it was there. A
whisper on the wind. The wind that had taunted and provoked me, brought me something amazing.
    I can only hope that it comes tonight so I have someone to
tell about Sam. I gaze at my reflection in the window and notice something,
movement down on the street. I frown and squint, willing my eyes to focus that
far. A figure stands under a lamppost across the road. It doesn’t move, not at
first. It stands there, leaning against the