A Dark Road
Authors: Amanda Lance
A Dark Road
By Amanda Lance
A Dark Road
Copyright © 2013 by Amanda Lance. All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: August 2013
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1492156390
ISBN-10:
1492156396
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For everyone else just trying to make it through.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Hadley
I unwrapped the silver picture frame and put it on the dusty shelf next to one of my trophies. Mom and Dad could make me pack up my life during senior year, force me to leave my friends, the fencing team; they could even make me participate in the unpacking of the knick-knacks. But they
could not
make me dust the shelf before I loaded it with the clutter of our family life.
As I looked at the picture within the frame, I almost felt bad for not giving it a proper home. The picture
demonstrated one of those rare times that Simon and I were both having a good hair day and I had actually been willing to participate with Mom and her camera.
I took the
frame from the shelf and used a dishrag to dust the area that would be the frame’s new home.
Simon walked into the large living room of our new
farm house whistling the James Bond theme song. His demeanor was so carefree, so lighthearted; if I didn’t love him so much, I would have hated him.
“Isn’t this place awesome
?” He wiggled one of the loose shelves on the wall. “It’s uber creepy. I keep waiting for a zombie to pop out and eat my brain.”
I smack
ed his hand away before I glanced at the low ceiling then down to the scratched floorboards. The realtor had thought to paint this room a marigold yellow. And though I did think it was nice with the enormous amount of sunlight the windows let in, it was easier to notice the ceaseless imperfections in the oak trim, the broken doorknobs, and the ugly radiators that stuck out from the walls.
“It would be disappointed…and hungry.
”
“I swear sometimes
it’s hard to believe we ever shared the same uterus.” He wrote his name in the dust. “Let alone at the same time! If you weren’t so diabolically evil, I’d deny you as my twin any day.”
I disagreed.
With our brown hair and eyes it would be easy enough to guess that Simon and I were related. At least we had both been blessed with high cheekbones and clear skin, giving us each a complementary look for our respective genders. Yet, as grateful as I was to be considered attractive, I didn’t want it to be my only feature and hated when people acknowledged it, as though my physicality was the best thing about me.
I shoved a
cardboard box at him and made my way to another. I didn’t want to go up the stairs yet to the room that was supposed to be ‘mine’ (as though rooms can belong to people). To unpack my stuff would make this move official. I would be an occupant in Ravel, Pennsylvania the moment my socks found a drawer or my books a shelf, and the semi-denial phase was just fine with me.
“You’re
being too optimistic about this.” For a second I imagined the tape I ripped through was Mom’s new job, the thin sheers of the bubble wrap I popped every used automobile she had ever sold.
“
Just use your imagination a little, Hadley. With some flowers, curtains, a few décor specials from the local hillbilly-mart, this place might actually be livable. Home was too cookie-cutter, anyway,” he scoffed. “Everything in Connecticut is.”
I sighed
. “See, there’s the thing. You’re still calling Connecticut home just like I am.
This
place isn’t home. It’s just a house.”
“Look, you think I like leaving my friends? No. It sucks. But we’
d have to do it anyway in a few months to go to college, so what difference does it make? And anyway, Mom is really excited to be the manager for this dealership. We should throw the old gal a bone…you know, before menopause comes along and breaks them.”
The only thing worse than hav
ing a brother who is unbiasedly popular, is having a brother who is almost perpetually and intolerably right about everything.
“Really thought
out that argument didn’t you? I bet you practiced it all the way here. Looking to be on the debate team?”
“Hads, if this piss
-ant school doesn’t have a fencing team, something tells me they don’t have a debate team. Even if they did, why would I want to join? It could seriously interfere with my time with the ladies and the band.”
Simon
always referred to ‘the band’ like he was part of some cool punk-rock group instead of the school band. He was, though, dead to rights serious about time with the ladies. His unrelenting charm actually got him into a hint of trouble every now and then with crazy girlfriends, pregnancy scares, and angry fathers. I had a secret suspicion he was happy about moving just so he could try out new material on the female student body, but I didn’t say anything yet. I’d save the ‘I told you so’s’ for later.
We were sorting through the DVDs
, trying to decide if they should be in alphabetical order or arranged by descending order of suck-etude. I absolutely had to put my foot down about arranging them according to lead actress’ cup sizes, but at least I won that battle. That’s when Dad made his way downstairs.
“Hey guys
, Have you worked up an appetite over here yet?”
“Does Prince Harry
like to party?”
Dad looked at me and straightened his wire rim glasses.
“He does,” I confirmed.
“So is that a
‘yes’ to being hungry?”
“We’re starving
, Dad.”
He withdrew some money from his wallet and placed the bills on top o
f Simon’s perfectly styled hair, pretending to balance it out before Simon swiped at it. “Mom ordered pizza from some place down the street. It’ll be good for you kids to get a lay of the land before you start school.”
“Dad,” Simon handed me the money and immediately went to repair any potential damage on his hair.
“What have we said about using that word?”
Again Dad looked at me for translation.
“‘Lay or any tense thereof,” I said. “You and Mom agreed to not use this word as per title one, subsection three, division six—”
“—
in clause 4.7, relating to any matter of similar words. Including, but not limited to: boner, nasty-”
“Naughty
, sexy—”
Mom chimed in from the hallway above, “Just go get the food!”
Though I wasn’t excited to explore the small town, I was willing to take any excuse I could to get out of that house. Back home when I wasn’t at school or out with friends, I was at the gym practicing for tournaments. Here, I didn’t know if I would have any of that. I hated the uncertainty of starting new. It was like the first day of tryouts when I was a freshman, I just wanted to know if I’d make the team or not and get it over with. Some people liked suspense. I didn’t.
I put the name of the piz
za place into the GPS and grabbed a light jacket. It was only mid-September, but already cold enough that the nights made everything frosty.. At home, most people still had their pools open and I could swim laps at Jordan’s house. Funny how a couple hundred miles can change things.
“Will you drive?” I thr
ew the keys of our shared car to Simon. “I want to scour Main Street for
Help Wanted
signs.”
“That’s a good idea
,” Simon said. “You need something to keep you from getting bored.”
“Sorry
. Some of us can’t just have shiny things dangled in front of them and be so perfectly content.”
“They
don’t have to be shiny, Hads.” His head shook in disbelief. “They just have to have large breasts. Large, symmetrical breasts. Large, symmetrical, perky—”
“Okay, enough
already!”
We elbowed each other out the door
. I swore as Simon pinched me, but got him back by tripping him up as he ran to the car. He stumbled and threw a handful of dead leaves at me.
“If
you weren’t a girl, sister dear—”
“Then I would still kick your ass. And if I wasn’t a girl, I wouldn’t be your sister at all.”
He flipped me the bird. “Tweet, tweet, Hads.”
We laughed but it didn’t help my mood much. I tried programming radio stations as we drove along, too much pop, not nearly enough rock.
Just another reason to hate this place.
“If this town doesn’t at least have decent pizza, then I
’m running away and joining the circus.”
“At least be original about it
, Hads. Run away to Habitat for Humanity, or join a nudist colony, or something.”
I sighed and sho
ok my head. “Just watch where you’re going, huh? I’d like to get there alive and with all of my limbs intact.”
Though it was almost dark
, we found the highway that would lead to the town square. As usual, Simon drove at a speed reminiscent of a wheelman in a bank robbery. I braced myself and held onto the door handle of our Ford Taurus.
“Hey, did you pay those tickets before we left the state?”
“Dad did,” he admitted. “I owe him like three-hundred bucks.”
I sighed
. “I have to get my own car before you crash this one.”
“Oh
, come on. You know I always take good care of the ol’ Bull here.”
As we stopped at a light
, I sighed and leaned into the crook of my fist. I looked over at the side of the road and saw a most delightful male specimen. He was about my age and leaning over the open hood of his truck with a flashlight in his mouth. His wild blond hair was streaked with oil from his hands, making him look like a mad scientist or one those villains from old cartoons. I sighed to myself and craned my neck to watch him as Simon pulled away, gunning down the street like a maniac.
Perhaps there would be something to this town after all.