Free Hanging by a Thread by Sophie Littlefield Page B

the lowest shelves of the refrigerator. Her hands moved over the bottles, and as she picked one up and looked at it, I saw a flash of her profile, her high cheekbones and lips curved in a smile.
    But I knew she was covering for Lara, who chatted and turned her back on the shelves behind her, even as her hand reached behind and her fingers closed around the neck of a bottle of premium vodka. Her eyes were bright, but as she giggled I recognized the faint anxiety that seemed to be a permanent part of her. I’d heard rumors that her stepfatherwas mean, that she was moving up to Oregon with her older sister as soon as she graduated.
    I watched Lara slide the bottle into the big leather handbag she had slung over her shoulder, heard the clank of glass against glass, and knew that she’d already stolen another bottle. The vision had to be from a year ago; Lara must have picked out the red, white, and blue top for a holiday weekend beach party much like this one, then put it away in the bottom of a drawer until July came around again. Lara was a thief, along with her pretty friend, and as my hand rested on her back, the cotton fabric told me all about the guilt she carried with her.
    A couple of stolen bottles of alcohol—that wasn’t so bad, was it? Nothing lots of other kids hadn’t done. Nothing I had to do anything about, anyway. It was no business of mine. As the vision faded, the pieces spinning and shattering, replaced by the salty breeze and the flickering light of the moon over the water, I breathed in deeply and let it out, trying to pretend I didn’t know this new thing about a girl who I’d hoped would be my friend.
    There was something I was missing, something that nagged at the edges of my mind. There was more to what I’d seen than a couple of girls stealing liquor, but I couldn’t quite get hold of it. The pleasant mood from moments before had disappeared, replaced with a throbbing headache and faint nausea, the occasional aftereffects of a vision. At least it was nothing like the reaction I’d had earlier, the one that had left me facedown on my bedroom floor. I’d never had two visions in one day before, and it was exhausting.
    “Come on,” Hopper was chanting. “Kiss her. With tongue. You know you’ll like it.”
    I pulled away from Lara, who uttered a wobbly “Hey” and smiled uncertainly at me. I managed to get to my feet as Hopper muttered something I couldn’t understand and Luke lurched drunkenly to his feet, asking if I was okay.
    “Yeah, just—I think I need to get some air. Maybe walk.”
    “I’ll come with you.”
    A few days ago this was exactly what I’d been hoping would happen, that Luke would ask me to walk along the beach again, that we might end up making out on the sand this time, and maybe going somewhere in his car after. Down the road a few miles was a scenic lookout where kids went to park—but the smart ones drove an extra ten minutes, taking a dirt road up to
another
lookout, where the cops didn’t come by to make sure people weren’t having sex or getting high.
    I had no intention of getting high. But in my purse, wrapped in tissue and stuffed in the bottom of my makeup bag, was one of the condoms my mother had insisted on keeping stocked in the linen closet since I turned thirteen. It was just in case—Mom had been preaching “just in case” forever—but I had been well on the way to convincing myself that Luke was the one, until I met Jack.
    Now I wasn’t so sure. So much had happened today, and between the filthy torn jacket and the thing with Lara, I’d experienced two powerful visions. Every vision left me feeling tingly and light-headed, but these last two weredifferent. They seemed somehow more directed at me, more … urgent. Certainly, they were physically more painful and exhausting. And I couldn’t help thinking that they were linked, that they were leading to something that had happened in this town, something I was supposed to do something