Until Again Read Online Free PDF

they touched heads, staying that way while they finished their cones. Chris knew the answer he’d given Becky was unsatisfactory, and he seriously considered explaining himself. In the end, he decided to take the easier route, though doing so had robbed much of the serenity from this interlude.
    Becky offered him a half-smile when they got back in the car, which told him she was still thinking about it. As they exited the parking lot, she skipped to the last song on the Ben Folds Five CD, the beautiful and uplifting “Lullaby.” She’d skipped several darker songs to do this.
    He decided to take that as a positive sign.

6
    “Oh, come on, Miea, throw your weight around a little,” Miea’s roommate Camara said.
    Camara wanted Miea to requisition the royal waccasassa, so the enormous passenger gull could take her and some of her college friends on a joyride. This wasn’t the kind of thing Miea did. She never liked broadcasting her being a princess directly in line to the throne. Throughout her college career, she’d fought especially hard to avoid special treatment, at least to the degree that her situation allowed. Another major issue, though, was that this wasn’t the best time to bother anyone in Tamarisk City with trivialities. Of course she couldn’t mention this to Camara. Her roommate had no idea how bad things had gotten with the Thorns. Nor did she know that the king and queen were about to leave on an incredibly risky diplomatic mission that Miea found herself thinking about all the time, though rumors were starting to circulate on campus. Still, Camara should have known Miea well enough by now to know that Miea meant it when she said the time wasn’t right and she should have simply left it at that.
    “What if I get the guards to drive us out into the countryside?” Miea said.
    Camara smirked. “We’ve had your guards drive us plenty of times. I want to fly.”
    Miea wondered if Camara might be flying a bit already. Miea had talked to her roommate several times about walking the line between partying and oblivion, but Camara had an annoying way of calling Miea “Your Majesty” whenever she did so, and Miea would always back down.
    “I’ll get the waccasassa for the day after finals,” Miea said.
    Camara waved her hand at her. “Oh, fine. Let’s do your stupid old car thing.”
    Miea was having second thoughts about going out with Camara, wondering, hardly for the first time, if they truly were friends.
    Then Dyson approached. He kissed Miea tenderly, and she felt her annoyance with Camara melt away. Now she truly didn’t want to go out with Camara but for an entirely different reason.
    “Have we decided what we’re doing tonight?” Dyson said, unfortunately including Camara in the “we.”
    Camara touched Dyson on the arm, sidling closer to him at the same time. “I had a great idea, but Miea squashed it.”
    Miea slowly shook her head. “Camara had an unreasonable idea that involved my making a special request to the palace, and I let her know it wouldn’t be possible. We seem to have compromised on a drive to the country.”
    Dyson seemed surprised by this suggestion, which was unusual because he always seemed enthusiastic about everything. “Why don’t we go into town instead? I just heard that there’s a tzadik band playing at Putumayo a little later, and they’re supposed to be great.”
    Miea considered this for an instant and said, “I could do that.”
    Camara patted Dyson on the cheek. Miea noticed that Camara never missed an opportunity to make physical contact with Miea’s boyfriend, though she had about as much of a chance of getting Dyson’s romantic attention as she had of requisitioning the royal waccasassa on her own.
    “I do love tzadik,” she said. “And I’ve had my fill of the countryside.”
    Camara had grown up in a rural part of the northern territories. While the sight of regal, six-pawed katmai and round, agile pulgases still fascinated Miea after all