The 52nd (The 52nd Saga Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

uncomfortable the way they were still, silent—the way I grew lightheaded from the scents of coconut and ginger reaching my nose. I breathed in deeply again. It smelled amazing.
    Two couples sat on the couch to my left. One young woman wore a multitude of turquoise bracelets mingled with metal and dark leather rings that decorated her forearm nearly up to her elbow. A large tattoo covered a good portion of the right side of her chest and continued underneath her shirt. As she crossed her hands over her knees, I saw a large, pear-shaped solitaire on her wedding finger. It was turquoise-colored and rimmed with white diamonds. It looked expensive. Nobody my age would be able to afford that. The blond boy next to her had his arm draped over her shoulder, his bulky muscles shadowing in what little light there was. I looked at his grungy Mohawk . . . they seemed young to be married. It didn’t surprise me to see a tattoo on hiscalf.
    The man sitting on the girl’s other side had his fingers laced together around his knee, his fingernails painted black. He looked old enough to be my father, but had a large tattoo stemming from the inside of his wrist, a feather headdress at its center over a rush of triangles, zigzags, and dots that climbed up to his elbow. The woman beside him bore a smaller but similar geometric tattoo on her petite wrist. A jade necklace lined with thick gold ringed her neck. She leaned back against the couch and tucked one foot in front of her, then crossed her knuckles lightly over her raised knee and pulled it close to her chest. In her relaxed state, she wasn’t studying me like the others did. In fact, though she and the man next to her stared as blatantly as the younger pair next to them, their scrutiny seemed less intrusive.
    Suddenly, I became aware of another stare coming from myright.
    I didn’t know why, but my heart pounded when I turned. My eyes collided with the piercing blue stare of the boy I’d first seen from across the room. He looked close to my age and was a bit smaller than the blond boy, but I still had to look up to meet his eyes. As his slender face stared down at me, his bushy eyebrows rose high with disbelief, like he couldn’t believe I was standing right here in front of him. I grew weary of his stare, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from him. He had neat sideburns and a head full of dark hair with waves that swept upward despite its natural unruliness. His nose was perfectly symmetrical—the kind people have surgery to get. There was a groove between it and his top lip. As I stared at its definition, how it perfected his face and set off sparks inside me, his lips parted and a dimple appeared in his cheek as he formed a clumsysmile.
    I was momentarily frozen by the electricity of his gaze. I had never seen a boy this beautiful before. I breathed in and looked down, noticing a tattoo underneath his short sleeve. Mazy shapes surrounded a seven-pointed star inside a circle, and a tree coiled deep roots inside the star. The ink wrapped well above his elbow, and I had to make myself look away from his toned bicep to the floor. Blue-laced sneakers covered his sockless feet. I liked them, but I forced myself to look away when I realized I even wanted to stare at hisankles.
    “Hi, I’m Zara. May I get you all started with something to drink?” Isaid.
    A low chuckle, soft like a hum, escaped the blond boy’s mouth. I ignoredit.
    “Thank you. That would be more than appreciated,” said the man who appeared to be the father. Something made him seem older than the others, though his face was smooth, and he didn’t have a single gray hair that I could see. He turned his head and looked past me to the beautiful boy at my right. “Lucas?”
    The man started speaking to Lucas in Spanish, but Lucas’s eyes didn’t move from mine. I couldn’t recall if he had even blinked. I felt self-conscious, like a nude model in the wrong classroom. I rubbed the side of my arm