Silent Symmetry (The Embodied trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and he still hadn’t shown up. The hallway emptied of students and I looked at my watch pointlessly. Then he appeared, running toward me, rushing but not flustered. He could see that I was waiting for him, so he had no choice but to slow down as he reached me.
    “Hey,” I ventured with a sympathetic smile.
    “Hi,” he panted, flinging open his locker door and grabbing some books.
    “Listen, I feel bad for you about last night,” I said. He ignored me. “At the café.”
    He slammed his locker shut. “No biggie,” he sighed. “That shit happens to me all the time.”
    “What do you mean?” I queried.
    “We’re late.” He hurried toward the classroom door.
    I jog ged after him. “It looked like kinda a big deal at the time.”
    Just as he reached the door he stopped and tur ned to me with an intense look.
    “ Das it, Kari. I just... I had a bad few days and sometimes... sometimes I snap and that’s what went down at the café. It blows cuz, man, I needed the money.”
    “No prob. Everything okay?”
    He looked down. Clearly everything was far from okay. I put my hand on his arm and his eyes shot back up at me. There was pain behind them. Real suffering. He pulled away and opened the door.
    There was a noticeable reaction as we walked in together. The other kids were already seated and Mr. Jefferson had just opened his mouth to speak. I hadn’t even thought about it, but Cruz and I looked like a couple. I must have blushed because there were snickers and some whispering. It was like a lame-ass sitcom. I couldn’t even look at Cruz as we took our seats next to each other. And I’m sure that he was feeling the same way.

Cha pter 3
     
    Dream #10: I discover a sparkling river that empties through a lush forest into a glowing lake. It had been there all the time but I never knew it existed.
     
    The Friday I met Aranara was a cold, cold day. My hometown of Lancaster, Wisconsin is in some kind of microclimate and we rarely got snow, even in the middle of winter, so I wasn’t expecting the betrayal that lurked in the air that early October in New York City. Monday was balmy, but by the end of the week a biting wind had blown in from Canada, leaving Manhattanites shivering in flimsy fall jackets.
    Over the previous couple of weeks I had tried to forget the weirdness of the double handshakes, the Temple of Truth, and the tunnel behind the kitchen cupboard. It was all so effing insane, and when I ignored it, it seemed to go away. At school I crushed on Noon from afar, but that was all I could do – his distance was both fascinating and impenetrable. Cruz was another matter. He was down-to-earth and stereotypically handsome, but there was a tension, an inner struggle, that made me want to hold him by the hand and tell him that everything was going to be okay. It was an incredibly powerful feeling and the only thing that forced me to concentrate on schoolwork was the fact that Mom had such high expectations for me. And who was I to begrudge her that? She had worked like a dog ever since Dad died, never pressuring me, never making me feel like I owed her anything. The least I could do was to make a decent effort.
    So I put my head down and studied. Literally. I didn’t even look at Noon or Cruz before the bell sounded at the end of each class. And I guess that’s why I didn’t notice Aranara. But once I did notice her, I would never forget her.
    The weekend was beckoning as I rushed through the school gates that bone-chilling afternoon. All I could think about was Skyping my Wisconsin friends. I missed them but I could already sense that the big city was changing my friendships. They had no way to relate to my stories of Broadway musicals or Central Park strolls, and although I could laugh at their latest Glee Club goings-on, I felt as removed from the stories as from the TV show that inspired them.
    I heard a shrill girl’s voice above the traffic hum: “Hey! Kari!” My shoulders were hunched up against the