What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7) Read Online Free PDF Page A

book. My eyes falling to the cursive on the page, neat and steady, but her words from the second I start reading aloud, anything but.
     
    April 10, 2004
     
    Today is the best day ever!!!
    My mom got me a new diary and it’s even better than the last one because it locks and only I have the key. So whatever I write is for my eyes only.
    Then there’s the other thing she bought. 
    I got the art set I wanted!!
    Pencil crayons, pastels, crayons and paint. All put together in this super cool pack that snaps closed so little sticky fingers like Tristan’s can’t use it when I’m not around.
    That isn’t even the best part.
    Wait for it…
    Auntie Daphne came over with Kayden, and we painted together!
    Oh my gosh! I’m not even done. There is sooooo much more.
    Our paintings are on the fridge side by side!
    Just like we were when we painted them.
    Like we’re always gonna be.
    Kayden is the bestest friend ever!
    He doesn’t look at me like I’m weird. Mom does sometimes when she doesn’t think I’m paying attention. So do her friends when they come over. It’s because I don’t talk. I stare a lot and like playing alone mostly.
    Unless it’s Kayden.
    I like playing with him because when things are too much, he’s okay just sitting with me. I like it when we just sit together. No words.
    It’s the best part of my day.
    Hang on. He’s trying to peek.
    Ugh. Boys.
    He’s gone now.
    But seriously, today is the best day ever!
     
    “Wait.” I stop reading. “This is…”
    I can’t even come up with the words. The day I saw her writing in her new diary and was annoyed by it because she wasn’t paying attention to me, this is what she was doing.
    Writing about me.
    I remember that day. 
    I did everything I could to put days like that out of my head a few years later, but I remember it so clearly it’s as though we just lived it. From the moment my mom brought me over and I sat beside her on the sofa bored out of my mind and desperately in need of something to do, right up until the moment she’d run upstairs and come back down with that art set of hers. Two large off-white sheets of paper with her.
    The way she dipped her head to the side and motioned to them silently, and me, being clueless and not getting the idea until she’d stuttered out the word paint and pointed to the paper.
    God. I can even remember the painting.
    Hers of the sky, lines on the page she labelled birds and mine, the opposite.
    The water, an ocean, with the ugliest looking fish in it.
    Unbelievable.
    Maybe wanting to show her my journal wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I already had a lot of memories of her from when we were kids, ones I’d tried to bury after my mom took off and I eventually broke away in favor of making new friends.
    But now, sharing our thoughts from back then the way we are, we’re creating new ones from them.
    No matter how bad things got or what she’s bound to see the more she reads, this is probably one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.
    “I’m the bestest , huh?”
    “The very bestest.” She says with a grin.
    “Why did you want to show me this so bad?”
    Slipping the book from my hands and bringing it over into her lap, she flips a couple of pages, smiling nostalgically over whatever it is she’s written before turning back to face me and explain.
    “You assumed when we were kids that because my attention seemed to be anywhere but on you that I didn’t notice you. That you were being ignored the same way you said you were the first time you tried to get my attention at four. I guess after what you just read to me about your dad, I wanted to show you differently.  Show you that you did matter. Sometimes, more than anyone else.”
    I’m torn in two directions with everything I read and she’s said.
    On the one hand, her excitement, how happy she seemed to be in the entry is infectious and in the moment, I’m right there with her. But on the other hand, this entry and her words serve as a