Scorpion Shards Read Online Free PDF Page B

but the color was wrong—and it was too high up.
    They stood up to get a better look. It was an uneven ball of light, maybe a fourth the size of the moon. It hurt their eyes to look at it.
    Winston backed up to a fence post, leaning on it for balance. The light had triggered something inside of him, and hethought he might pass out. All at once, his brain was firing like crazy, and he was filled with an overpowering sense of wonder and confusion, as if all his life he had been sleeping and was just waking up. But of all the confused feelings and thoughts that rocketed through his head, the most overwhelming feeling of all was the sense that this light in the sky, whatever it was, was meant for him.
    â€œIt’s incredible,” said Tory. “I’ve never . . . felt anything like it.”
    Winston looked over at Tory and could see in her rapid breathing and wonder-filled eyes that she was hit by the same devastating wave of emotion that he felt. She had the same revelation that this odd light in the sky did not just hit their eyes, it ignited their souls.
    It made Winston furious!
    Whatever that light was, it was for him and him alone. He didn’t want to have to share such a special thing with this hideous girl beside him. It would mean that they didn’t meet tonight by accident—they were drawn together—somehow bound like soul mates. Winston found the thought unbearable.
    â€œI . . . know you, don’t I? asked Tory. “We’re the same age, you and me!” She said it with such excitement, it made Winston cringe.
    â€œWe might both be freaks,” growled Winston, “but I ain’t nothin’ like you! We got nothin’ in common, do you hear me?!”
    It was then that Winston noticed the noise. It had been growing all around both of them since the light had appeared in the sky, and now its volume grew and multiplied until it buzzed in the brush like an air-raid siren. Winston knew right then that the sound was aimed at the two of them, and no one else in all of Alabama—and he knew that it was a sign hecould not deny. The sound was nature itself, screaming out to tell him that this torturously ugly girl was more his sister than anyone born to his family. More like him than anyone he had known.
    â€œWhat is it?” asked Tory, holding her ears. Winston tried to squeeze out the sound as well, but couldn’t.
    â€œCrickets,” answered Winston. “Millions of ’em.”

3. A PLANETOID, THE FULL MOON, AND THE SCORPION STAR
----
    E ARLIER THAT SAME DAY, AND A THOUSAND MILES NORTHEAST , the south fork of eastern Long Island was set upon by an unseasonably warm fog. It brooded dense and round on the weather maps like a gray cataract—an unseeing eye surrounded by cold, clear skies. Shrouded in the center of the fog stood Hampton Bays High School, where things had been normal until third period. That’s when the chase began for Lourdes Hidalgo.
    It started in the science lab, and the chase spread through the school as Lourdes tried to escape from the teachers who chased her. She had lost them by ducking into a broom closet, and now she descended the south stairwell, hoping that everyone would be thrown off track just long enough for her to burst out into the foggy October and freedom.
    As Lourdes lumbered down the worn metal stairs of the old school, the stairs rang out in dull, heavy tolls, like an ancient mission bell. The bolts creaked, and the steel steps themselves seemed like cardboard, ready to give way under her immense weight.
    Lourdes, however, had grown used to that. She was used to chairs buckling beneath her when she sat. She was used to the way her hips would brush past both sides of a door frame when she entered a room, as if the entire room was a tight pair of pants she was trying to squeeze her way into. But she would never get used to the cruel teasing.
    Now Lourdes was bounding down the metal stairs, two