Chào các bạn! Vì nhiều lý do từ nay Truyen2U chính thức đổi tên là Truyen247.Pro. Mong các bạn tiếp tục ủng hộ truy cập tên miền mới này nhé! Mãi yêu... ♥

Liminal - Excerpt Only (Chapter One)

LIMINAL (Book One of the Liminals series)

By Maree Anderson

Now you see me, now you don't!

My name's Wren, and I'm a liminal who can phase in and out of the real world.

Sounds like an awesome trick, right? Yeah. Like everything that's supposed to be cool, it's complicated. I'm caught between two warring factions who'd kill to get a piece of me. Someone's blocked my energy flows so if I phase I'll get trapped in a ghostlike plane called Between... and die. And to top it all off, I'm totally crushing on my only ally, mysterious bad boy Kade. Sad thing is he's keeping secrets from me, just like everyone else. My life's spinning out of control. I don't know who to trust anymore. And what I find lurking Between is the biggest shock of all.

***

iBooks Stores Australia/New Zealand "Best Books of August" 2013

Winner: Editor's Choice Division

Romance Writers of New Zealand Strictly Single contest

Second place: Published Authors Division

From the Heart Romance Writers Golden Gateway contest

***

LIMINAL

Copyright 2013 by Maree Anderson

Published by Maree Anderson

ISBN 978-0-9922498-6-1

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

Acknowledgements

Huge thanks to my daughter for finding the perfect "Wren" to grace the cover of Liminal. And to my Cover Artist Extraordinaire, Rob, who somehow manages to tame the wild images in my head and make them beautiful.

A special shout-out to Wild Woman Saranna for wading through the first draft of Liminal and whipping my sad attempt at a blurb into shape. Have I told you lately how awesomely talented you are?

And my heartfelt thanks to Laura B, who believed in this story from the beginning, and whose support and generous feedback gave me the courage to publish it rather than leave it languishing on my hard-drive.

***

LIMINAL

CHAPTER ONE

Something compels me to glance down at my hands and my stomach twists into knots. They look wrong. The skin is fish-belly white, leached of all color from wrist to fingertips. It's such a stark contrast to the tanned skin of my arms it looks like a corpse's hands have somehow been seamlessly grafted to my wrists.

I start to tremble as I inspect my hands more closely, trying to make sense of what my lizard-brain already knows at some deep instinctual level. And as I finally understand what I'm seeing, trembling turn to full-body shudders. It isn't static, this process. The little pigment remaining in my skin is draining away. My hands are turning transparent save for a darker outline etching the shape of outspread fingers—fingers that are twitching like they've been zapped with an electrical charge... and I am powerless to prevent it.

My hands vanish.

Someone's whimpering and— Oh God, it's me, the frantic sounds torn from my throat as I try to shake life back into fingers that I know must be there. Except I can't feel them anymore. I. Can't. Feel. Them!

Worse, so much worse, the strangeness is spreading, crawling up my arms to suck the life from them, fading my skin tone to the nothing color of watery powdered milk. My chest heaves. I feel my lungs inflating, my mouth stretching into a scream. And in the blink of an eye I'm standing before a full-length mirror and the scream strangles unborn in my throat. I'm naked. And my face, my body—all of me—is now colorless and insubstantial, the merest suggestion of a human figure such as an artist might sketch with a soft charcoal pencil.

I lower my eyelids, shuttering the smears of blackness my eyes have become. And when I open them again, the mirror reveals no reflection. I know I'm standing right in front of the mirror. I know it absolutely. But I'm invisible. To the rest of the world I no longer exist.

~~~

If I could force a genie to grant me three wishes, my first wish would be simple; I'd wish to be gently coaxed awake by warm streams of sunlight stroking my face. I'd even settle for twittering birds. Or my mom yelling "Wren, you'll be late for school if you don't get a move on!" and yanking open my drapes to drench my room in early morning light. But she hasn't rousted me out of bed since I turned sixteen. And I never thought I'd say this but I miss it. Heck, even Dan bouncing on my bed and whacking me with a pillow, like he used to when we were bratty kids, would be a welcome change.

Anything would be better than this recurring nightmare, this waking with a desert-dry mouth and my heart drumming on the walls of my chest like it desperately wants to escape.

I'd love to escape, too, if only I knew how to go about it. If only I could be certain it wouldn't follow me. If only I understood exactly what "it" was, and why it had chosen my life to ruin. Mom says karma always comes back to bite you in the behind. But aside from some kissing sessions with my ex-boyfriend that might have involved tongue, I'm that well-behaved "good girl" teen all parents pray for. So I figure I must have been bad in a previous life. Real bad.

I lay in bed with my eyelids squeezed tightly shut, debating whether to bother getting up. But I'd missed dinner last night—again. My mouth watered at the mere thought of food and the hunger pains stabbing my insides were too insistent to ignore.

The blackout drapes shrouded my room with a comfortable gloom that didn't prevent the headache kicking in the instant I dared peel open my eyelids. I ignored the throb behind my temples, and flopped out a hand to grope for my alarm clock and fumble the buzzer switch to Off before it could blast my eardrums. Because I couldn't help myself, I lolled my head to the right to check the time.

Yep. Same old, same old. I'd awoken five minutes before the alarm blared. Uncanny. And probably a good thing, considering the shrill screeching would probably make my head explode.

One. Two—this was so gonna hurt. Three. I tensed my stomach muscles and hauled my protesting body upright. The ache in my skull ratcheted from a dull throbbing to bite-your-lips-so-you-don't-cry. Guess I could spend my diminishing allowance on a jumbo packet of aspirin. I could swallow a handful and wait 'til they kicked in before even attempting to get out of bed. But that would be giving in. The headaches are linked to the now-you-see-me, now-you-don't stuff. I don't know why I know this, but I do. Somehow. And although I can't control much in my life right now, I can control whether or not I pop painkillers.

I tell myself this is exercising my right to choose—that it helps me stay strong. But the truth is I'm scared. Medicating the headaches might numb everything—the pain, the frustration, the anger. The hope, too. And then I won't care enough to fight anymore.

Through sleep-bleared eyes I picked at the knot of sheet that'd wrapped about my legs during the night. Dad once took me and Dan camping and spent all weekend trying to teach me how to tie a decent knot. The verdict? An affectionate ruffle of my hair and the wry comment that I better hope I never have to tie a knot to save myself. Bet he'd be impressed by this purely unconscious sheet-knotting ability—

 Ah, who am I kidding? Nothing I do these days impresses either of my parents. Parents have to remember you exist before you can impress them. And just so's you know, when I go on about my parents not remembering I exist I'm not being a "poor me" drama-queen. I can see it in their eyes—that instant of blind panic as they wonder who the heck this strange girl is, and what she's doing in their house, before something clicks in their brains and they suddenly know me again. Every time it happens I repeat to myself over and over that it's temporary, that things will go back to normal soon and everything will be peachy keen again. But I wonder whether I truly believe that anymore. "It" is happening more and more frequently. Lately, I seem to be more invisible than not. It's like the nightmare is becoming my reality.

I swung my legs to the floor and stumbled from my bedroom, careening off a wall and bruising my elbow as I headed down the hallway to the bathroom I shared with Dan.

I didn't bother switching on the light. Getting up close and personal with my reflection isn't for the fainthearted. I stuck my head under the faucet and turned the cold on full, letting the water pound the base of my skull. When everything felt comfortably numb, I slowly raised my head, testing the pain. Better. Bearable, even. And cheaper than aspirin. The tension in my shoulders eased as I straightened from my hunch to blink the water from my eyes and sluice the moisture from my face with my hands.

While I was towel-drying the sopping wet ropes of my hair the bathroom door burst open. Dan wandered in, yawning and scratching his butt. Classy guy, my brother.

Bending at the waist, I shook out my hair and positioned the towel at my nape. I gave the towel a couple of twists at forehead level before flicking the tail over my head and tucking it under at the back as I straightened. Experimentally I shook my head. Perfect turban. Nice. Before I could tell him the bathroom was all his, Dan lifted the toilet seat and yanked down his boxers.

Getting an eyeful of my brother's bare butt? Ewww. A new low, even for me. Beyond speech, I clapped one hand over my eyes and whacked at the light switch with the palm of my other hand.

Dan yelped. "What the fuck?"

And when I dared peek, blinking in the harsh brightness that pierced the bathroom, he'd whipped up his boxers. Goody. I wouldn't be gouging my eyes out with a spoon today. I couldn't be sure he'd seen me, though. He might have been reacting to the weirdness of thinking the light had somehow switched on all by itself. So I unwound the towel from my head, shook it out, and flicked it at him.

The hemmed edge got him right on his boxer-clad butt. Score.

He yelped again and skittered to one side. His gaze locked onto mine. He gave me a long, slow head-to-toer. And then his eyes widened. "Shit! Sorry. Hang on.... Who the hell are y—?"

"The s-word and flashing your butt?" I started babbling before he could finish his sentence and totally sink my day before it even started. "Not to mention forgetting to knock. Jeez, bro, way to go. You're so lucky it was me you barged in on and not Mom. If she'd been using this bathroom you'd be getting a monumentally huge lecture right now."

I watched him processing my words, absorbing the subtext. Wait for it—

Ah, there. Recognition smacking him upside the head, alarm at discovering a strange girl in the bathroom receding. "Shit," he said again, scrubbing his fingers through his hair so it stood up in untidy hedgehog spikes. "Sorry, sis. Didn't see you lurking there. Still half asleep, yanno?"

"Story of my life," I muttered.

"Can you—?" He flapped his hands and made shooing motions. Slashes of crimson painted his cheeks.

I left him to it rather than claiming first dibs on the bathroom and forcing him to suffer. I'm nice like that.

It took mere minutes to get ready for school. When your classmates generally don't notice you unless you make mammoth efforts to attract their attention, there's little point angsting over your appearance. Faded jeans washed so many times they were butter-soft and the first t-shirt I grabbed from my drawer were my "look" for today—and pretty much every day, to be honest. Grungy canvas sneakers completed my "who cares?" ensemble. I speared fingers through the mop my hair had become and tucked it behind my ears. That was it for grooming. And that's me these days: every high school fashion diva's nightmare.

Some remnant of the girly-girl who'd once been Mitchell's girlfriend halted me mid-step.

Mitchell's a jock and a sweetie—the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. We were inseparable until all the weirdness started. In fact my first real clue all was not right in Wren's World had been Mitchell morphing overnight from the best boyfriend ever, to a confused guy who didn't know how to handle it when I hugged him in the school corridor, like I usually did. Instead of kissing me, like he usually did, he acted like I'd just flown in from another planet—as though I was a stranger. And within the week he'd scored a new girlfriend.

I'd been gutted by his oh-so-humiliating public rejection—still was, even if I now understood the reason for it. Well, as much as I understood anything about any of this.

I ducked back into my room to grab a comb and drag it through the mess of still-damp tangles. Seems I hadn't lost all sense of pride. Not yet, anyway.

I was perched on the countertop, scoffing a bowl of Dan's favorite cereal—one perk of the whole invisibility thing 'cause he'd never realize it was me emptying the box—when Mom careened into the kitchen. As per every weekday morning she was on auto-pilot, her gaze unfocussed, mind busy with important Mom-stuff as she slapped a stack of sandwiches together for Dan's lunch. I watched as she grabbed one of the heinously expensive protein bars he'd nagged her to buy from the cupboard, an apple and two kiwis from the fruit bowl, and popped the lot in a sturdy brown paper bag. A couple of bucks from the change jar on the counter joined the food in the bag.

Mom tells anyone who'll listen school cafeteria food has the nutritional equivalent of cardboard. But that doesn't mean Dan can't have a treat if he wants one. Aside from coming down real hard on us for swearing she's a bit of a soft-touch. Even so, Dan'll be toast if she finds out he usually tosses the sandwiches because he wheedles Dad into slipping him lunch money, too. And I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that lecture.

She rolled the top of the bag down and twisted the ends to make a secure package. Mom, being Mom, she wrote Dan's name on the bag with a purple Sharpie—you know, in the unlikely event another student might be tempted to swipe a homemade lunch.

Today's guaranteed to embarrass special addition was a big purple smiley face with zigzag hair. I snickered. Dan would pretend to have a cow when he saw it but he'd be secretly disappointed if she didn't bother.

The snicker got all mixed up with my mouthful of cereal and the lump of wistful sadness in my throat. One lunch bag. Guess it was too much to hope she'd remember to make my lunch, too.

I choked and thumped my breastbone until I managed to swallow the lump.

She slanted a glance in my direction. Her brow was pleated, face all scrunched up like it gets when she's thinking about something important.

I froze, my heart skipping a beat and then racing like a mad thing and echoing thunderously in my ears. I'm right here, Mom. It's not that hard. All you have to do is notice me... and then remember you have a daughter. Remember me. Please?

I held my breath until tiny dark blobs danced in my vision. Waiting. Hoping. And when I couldn't bear it any longer, my breath whooshed out and I leaned forward to nudge her arm and force her to see me. "M-Mom? A-are you gonna pack me a lunch, too?" My voice was thick and rough with tears I stubbornly refused to shed.

She blinked. Her eyes glazed with shock.

I waited, stomach muscles tensed so hard they ached and lips compressed to a tight line to stop them trembling. It's like an "On" switch is flicked in people's brains and I abruptly become part of their reality again. And right now I could almost see the memories of flooding back and lodging in her consciousness. And then her panicked expression finally smoothed and she smiled. "Of course I am, sweetie," she said. "Bologna okay?"

I puffed out a jagged defeated sigh. I despise bologna. The texture, with its almost slimy coating, and the too-pink-to-be-real color of it, makes me want to barf. She's my mom. She's supposed to remember that stuff, right? Just like she's supposed to remember to wake me in the morning when I oversleep so I don't have to set the alarm. "Hey, don't worry about it, Mom. You go finish getting ready for work. I'll grab something."

"Thanks, sweetie." She dropped a kiss atop my head.

I resisted the desire to lean into her and hug her tight. Or scream at her and demand to know why she couldn't fix this. Aren't parents supposed to be able to sort all their kids' problems? But it wasn't her fault. I was the one with the waaay the heck out there problem that was waaay beyond any parent's ability to fix.

Yeah. Back to my problem. Remember that genie? Wish number two would be to know the exact nature of my "problem" so I could fix it. And number three, the most important wish of all, how to stop it from ever happening again.

As soon as Mom rushed off upstairs I grabbed my backpack and fled the house. Dan would be running late, as usual. And Dad would offer him a ride to school, as usual. But it was more than I could bear to hang around and wait in vain for Dad to offer me a ride, too. Sure, I could race upstairs and confront him, launch myself at him and hug him tight... then quickly back off and wait with my heart in my throat and my mind yammering worst case scenarios until he remembered who I was. Sure, I could make an effort to bring myself to his attention, like I'd done with Mom, but his horrified, omigod-how-could-I-have-forgotten-Wren expression would only smother me with more guilt and I'd end up even more depressed. Sometimes it's easier—less heartbreaking and soul-destroying—to run rather than stay and fight a losing battle.

I kicked at a stone, skittering it across the pavement ahead of me. With any luck there'd be someone already waiting at the bus stop so I wouldn't have to walk. See, I'm not usually so slow on the uptake but it'd taken me an entire month to realize the school bus wasn't zooming past my stop because the driver was a grade-A jerk. When I finally worked through the logic and figured it out, I was so freaking relieved I bawled like a baby. The driver hadn't taken an instant and violent dislike to me. Most of the time he just didn't see me at all. If I was the lone kid at the stop, nine times out of ten he'd drive on past, seemingly ignoring my frantic waving. If I had company, though, he'd always slam on the brakes and bring the bus to a screeching shuddering halt. Logical. Kind of.

This morning I lucked in. A shaggy-haired guy, maybe a year or two older than me, was leaning against the bus stop signpost. Hadn't seen him 'round before.

Chances were ridiculously high he wouldn't notice me unless I got right up in his face, so I grabbed at the perfect opportunity to check him out. Blatantly. Taller than Dan—and my brother is no slouch in the height department. Tanned. Muscles in all the right places, but not gym-junkie overdone. Light blue Siberian Husky eyes, the kind that are so intense and bright they look almost unnatural.

Nice.

Very nice. Yum, in fact.

He was the kind of guy who made even ultra-confident popular girls swallow their tongues and drool. He had the whole bad-boy thing going on, from his bored I-don't-give-a-rat's-butt expression, to a rumpled t-shirt that was so faded I couldn't make out the slogan. Looked like his scuffed leather pants weren't just for show, either. They'd had more than a few encounters with hard surfaces. His boots looked hardcore genuine, too. I was pretty sure they were Joe Rocket leather motorbike boots, the same ones Dan had circled in the catalog and kept begging Mom to buy him for his birthday. Which was plain stupid considering my brother would never own a motorbike in a million years if Mom had anything to do with it.

The leather jacket this guy had slung over his shoulder shouted real deal, too. All he was missing was the tricked out street bike and a helmet dangling from his wrist. Or maybe not the helmet. He looked too cool to be worried about safety.

It hit me then that his bike might be parked nearby and he might be hanging here waiting for someone. And if he got tired of waiting and took off in the next few minutes, he'd leave me stranded if—when—the bus driver drove right on past my stop. I sighed, feeling more sorry for myself than usual. Wouldn't that be the icing on this craptastic start to the day cake?

I glanced around the bus stop, and for good measure, up and down the street. Nope. No sign of a bike. Looked more and more likely he was slumming it this morning and catching the bus. Relief made me slump. I'd walked every day this week and today I was beyond grateful to catch a break.

I leaned against the trunk of the large tree shading the stop, and tried to figure out if I was doing my invisible-thing right now or merely beneath his notice. Hard to tell. He wasn't giving anything away.

Acting purely on impulse, I levered myself upright and clicked my fingers at him.

Nothing.

Some little devil inside me provoked me to be really uncool and do a few jumping jacks.

No what-the-heck-is-she-nuts-or-something reaction. No reaction at all. So yep. I'd say that confirmed I was doing the whole "unseen and unnoticed" thing again.

Hmmm. Would he spot the clumps of long grass flattened beneath my invisible feet, and wonder at them?

His expression didn't change as he shifted his booted feet. Apparently he wasn't that observant. But then in my experience most people aren't. It's like on TV shows with paranormal storylines—if characters in the story do spot something weird, their minds come up with some halfway rational explanation to justify the weirdness or they just shrug it off.

I sank into a daydream. Pathetic I know, but I pretended Leather Pants Dude could see me. And, even better, liked what he saw. I pretended he was trying to pluck up enough courage to talk to me—maybe even ask for my number. I pretended I was a normal girl, with a normal life.

My headache eased. A buzz of warm contentment filled the emptiness, provoking me to stretch the cricks out of my back. Wow. I hadn't felt this great in ages.

"Thank God," LPD said, sounding all gruff and grumpy. "About bloody time."

English accent. Yum. His hotness factor blew past ten out of ten and headed into the stratosphere and—

Hang on. Had that comment been directed at me? My gaze whipped to his face just in time to see his lips curve briefly upward before they flattened again into a neutral line.

A smile? I searched his face for clues as he stared over my shoulder at something in the distance.

The rumble of the approaching school bus gave me my answer, and the rush of hope zinging through me seeped away, leaving me wrung out and weary. "About bloody time" the bus got here. Riiight. Wren Gibson, you are three kinds of idiot. Invisibility issues aside, why would a guy like him condescend to notice a girl like me?

The bus slowed and pulled up to the curb. My headache rocketed from barely noticeable to whimper-worthy in the mere seconds it took for the doors to squeal open. I gritted my teeth. The sound was a thousand times worse than nails raking across a chalkboard. I prodded myself to move and rushed up the steps ahead of LPD. Being last aboard was practically begging the driver to shut the doors on me, which, take it from me, is not a whole lot of fun. I waved my student bus pass at him, beyond caring whether or not he saw it—or me. The pass was valid. Wasn't like I was taking advantage of my weird ability to skulk around unnoticed and get away without paying. Why would I? That'd be accepting what's happening to me, using it. I refuse to accept it. I just want it to go away.

I slid into the nearest empty seat and wedged myself into the corner by the window. As usual I stuck my pack on the seat beside me—a barrier to discourage anyone from sitting there. From what I'd been able to figure out there were some hard and fast rules to this whole invisibility curse. Like, if I held my pack in my lap, the invisibility thing affected it, too, and the seat would appear entirely vacant. But if I stuck it next to me on the seat and I wasn't touching it, my pack could be seen just fine by other people. My this-seat's-taken ploy usually worked. Unless some kid shoved the "ownerless" bag on the floor, forcing me to make my presence felt.

I know, I know. Stop hogging an entire seat, and sit next to someone, right? Sure, if only I could be one-hundred-percent sure of being visible when I sat down, and remaining visible throughout the bus trip. Because believe me, the novelty of sitting next to someone who's oblivious to your presence wears off real quick—in my case, around the third time I slid into whoever had scored the window seat when the bus driver took a corner a little too fast. Reactions range from shrill screeches and impressive swearing, to white-faced mute shock. One girl even fainted all over me when we bumped hips and I "appeared". And let's not even get into the shock value if someone plunks their butt into my lap. Apparently abrupt visibility has a somewhat negative effect on your average teen's mental health.

The bus's idling engine vibrated the windowpane against my temple. It was more comforting than irritating. I closed my eyes, shutting out the world.

Someone clomped past my seat, and I resisted the desire to peek beneath my lashes to check where LPD had decided to sit. If he wasn't going to choose my seat it wasn't any concern of mine. Right?

Right.

The bus lurched into gear and chugged off toward school, leaving me to my warm, fuzzy daydreams. Having my teachers mark me present without a fuss or a struggle. My former friends seeking me out, including me in their plans. Mitchell begging to be my boyfriend again. Being normal.

I don't know quite when Mitchell morphed into LPD, but hey, it was a daydream, a fantasy. I went with it. And picturing the expression on my mom's face if I ever dared bring home a guy in leather pants and biker boots dragged a smile to my lips. That'd get her attention, for sure. And Dad's, too.

The smile sagged a little at the corners. And then fell off my face. Hah. Daydreaming was a waste of time when I was living a nightmare and couldn't figure out how to fight my way free. 

~~~

Copyright 2013 Maree Anderson

www.mareeanderson.com

Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro