Night Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

since anyone gave a crap—or had a fully staffed police force.
    She remembered too when a thing called Vurp had been the major way people communicated. Phone calls had video, not just audio the way they did now. She could go a full hour on how the infrastructure in Florida had corroded to the point where we were forced to resort again to voice mails and text messages.
    But she was the one who’d moved us here from Connecticut. (And I could go and on and on about the injustice of that .)
    When my alarm went off at six thirty on Wednesday morning, I pressed Snooze once and stared at my ceiling, wondering if I could get away with another day of absence from school. I wasn’t done searching for Sasha, even if everyone else was. I knew that even though the police could now be “involved,” they wouldn’t find Sasha, either.
    â€œYou’re going to be late for the bus!” Mom called, rapping briskly on my closed bedroom door.
    I exhaled heavily. Guess school was on my schedule. Reaching over to my bedside table, I picked up my old-fashioned alarm clock and pressed the off button on the back. I’d had the alarm set on the loudest ringer. Being a deep sleeper, I needed the equivalent of a fire drill to wake me, and this old clock was loud .
    Throwing my legs over the edge of my bed, I resolved to continue the hunt for Sasha that afternoon. There would be time after school to keep searching. Calvin and I had at least four hours of decent daylight after our last class.
    As I showered, thoughts of Sasha popped into my head.
    She had been the only person who was kind enough to bring a welcome basket over to our house when Mom and I moved in.
    I quickly towel dried my messy red mane of hair before shoving it into a ponytail.
    Then, wrapping a towel around my body, I went back to my room and started the search for an outfit.
    The jangling alarm from my clock cut through the air unexpectedly. I jumped, startled, and jogged over to the bedside table to shut it off again—I must have pressed the snooze button twice by accident—and stopped short.
    The clock wasn’t on my bedside table anymore.
    Huh?
    The ringing continued. I checked on the floor beneath my bed, and it wasn’t there either.
    Listening more closely, I realized with ever-growing confusion that the alarm was coming from my walk-in closet.
    Heart beating hard, I opened the closet door and stepped inside. In the far left-hand corner were my pairs of sneakers and shoes. Opposite that was where I kept my dirty laundry in a messy heap. The ringing was coming from underneath that.
    Scooping up jeans, T-shirts, and mismatched socks, I sifted through the clothes, and I found my alarm clock at the very bottom of the pile.
    Turning it off, I crouched there in the silence.
    Finally, I stood up, hiking my towel more securely around me.
    â€œMom?” I called.
    Nothing.
    I walked over to my bedside table and set the alarm clock down where I had left it earlier. Then I stepped out into the hallway.
    I hadn’t gone far when, on second thought, I backed up into my room to look, hard, at my bedside table.
    The clock was still there.
    Just checking.
    â€œMom?” I called again.
    â€œSkylar!” Mom exclaimed. “What are you still doing in your towel?” She emerged from her room, clutching a mug of hot coffee in her perfectly manicured hands.
    â€œWere you just in my room?” I asked.
    Mom sighed. “No, I wasn’t anywhere near your room, Sky.” She fluffed her freshly styled hair anxiously with one hand, keeping a firm grip on her coffee mug with the other. “You’re going to be late for school!”
    I shook my head. “Why did you move my alarm clock?”
    Mom looked absolutely exasperated. “Skylar Reid! I wasn’t in your room! Stop with the crazy questions. Go get dressed! The bus is going to be here in”—she checked her silver watch—“three and a half