Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Sunny D tastes like someone made a bet that they could make orange juice without oranges.
—Athena’s secret thoughts
ATHENA
12 years old
“Mary Beth,” I whispered fiercely. “What are you doing?”
“I’m literally asking you not to follow me, Athena,” my sister grumbled.
Mary Beth was twelve and a half to my twelve and three-quarters. My brother, Gavrel, was nineteen.
I was what my sister liked to call an ‘oops baby.’
Which is honestly quite hilarious seeing as we were adopted.
Mom liked to call me her miracle.
Dad liked to call me his pain in the ass.
“But Daddy said we had to stay inside,” I said. “He literally said ‘stay inside, Athena and Mary Beth.’”
“Daddy won’t know I’m leaving, if you mind your own business and go inside,” she grumbled.
I wouldn’t.
We both knew I wouldn’t.
Yet, I would act like I was going to go inside, then follow her anyway.
She should’ve known better when I went inside and waited. She stood there for a long moment before she was assured I’d gone inside. Only when she disappeared around the corner of the long hotel hallway did I dart out and head for the stairs.
I took the stairs two at a time, using my long legs—Dad liked to call them runner legs—to propel me as fast as possible down the narrow staircase.
When I got to the bottom, I carefully opened up the stairwell door and peeked out.
No one was there, so I tiptoed out of the narrow corridor into the main lobby.
We were staying in some fancy hotel in Hawaii.
We were right on the beach, and Daddy said the hotel cost six months of mortgage payments to stay at. But Mom wanted to renew their vows, and the beaches of Hawaii was where she wanted to do it.
Dad said he humored her because “What else can I do?”
I hoped my future husband gave me the moon and the stars like my dad did my mom.
A flash of white-blonde hair had me hurrying toward the exit to see Mary Beth out in the hallway that would lead out to the beach.
Daddy told us we couldn’t go out at night because of the wall.
But there she went, and there I followed.
“What’s there to be done?” I heard my dad talking.
Something had happened today.
Something bad.
Dad saw a little girl get taken, and he and Mom had been talking to the police ever since.
That was why Dad told us to stay in the room.
He was scared.
Heck, I was scared.
More because I thought I would get in trouble, not because I was worried I’d be taken.
“It’s happened twice now in three days,” I heard another man say. “Something has to be done. You have hundreds of people coming here, a lot of them with families. You can’t have them coming here if it’s unsafe.”
I hesitated, wanting to hear more about what was being said, but more curious about what it was that Mary Beth was doing.
In the end, I chose Mary Beth.
I followed her out and found her standing at the wall looking over at the black ocean.
I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but I joined her at the wall, saying, “Whatcha lookin’ at?”
She gasped and turned, about to yell at me for following her, but she didn’t get the chance.
“Mary Beth?”
I looked over Mary Beth’s shoulder to see a man standing there.
“Oh, Octavian.” She smiled. “What are you doing here so early?”
His eyes went from her to me, and his eyes seemed to shine.
“I…” I started to back away, but I bumped into something hard.
I turned to find another man standing behind me.
“Mary Beth,” I whispered, scared for my life now.
“Attie,” she murmured quietly. “Jump.”
I didn’t question it.
I jumped.
I hit the water with a splash, and the waves immediately started to pound into my face.
But, like my mom, I was an excellent swimmer.
I did my first open lake competition last month and won the entire thing for the sixteen to eighteen-year-old division. Mom had to fib and tell them that I was sixteen.
A wave of water hit my face, and I coughed as water went into my mouth and filled the tube it wasn’t supposed to fill.
Distantly, I heard a scream, and I just knew in my heart it was Mary Beth.
I swam harder, determined to get to the stairs I’d seen earlier.
A rock hit me in the knee, and I reached out desperately, hoping to haul myself on top of it.
I made it, scrambled up to the rock, and gasped in gulping breaths of air.
And with the bare amount of air left in my lungs I screamed my sister’s name. “Mary Beth!”
No one heard me.
The waves were probably too loud.
I screamed again.
Still nothing.
Terrified, I sat on that rock, and I waited.
I don’t know how long I waited, though.
The first hints of light were coming over the horizon when I saw a beam of light.