Free Break Away (Away, Book 1) by Tatiana Vila Page B

calories. Not that it would
affect you, anyway.”
    “Exactly,” I said, taking my cue to carry
on.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Can’t you find something more original to
ask?” I took out more quarters and neared the life-saving vending
machine. “You sound like a parakeet with poor talking skills.”
    “Dafne, stop. You are not buying more
crap. You have enough chocolates and candy to feed an entire
nation.”
    “Actually, there’s no way I would feed an
entire nation without Hot Tamales. I mean, how can they not have
them here? That is an outrage.” I waved my hands in the air.
“An offense to high-quality food dispensers.” I moved on to the
next machine with the words GET A GRIP ON YOUR
THIRST crowning the top. After all Linda’s talk about
tasting the rain, my throat had squeezed in delight and dried in
anticipation.
    “Food? You call that food?”
    “Everything you take into your mouth and
ends up in your belly is food. That includes the occasional spider
that crawls up into your open mouth while you’re sleeping, or some
other type of nasty bug. It doesn’t matter.” Another thump and the iced tea was ready for my hand.
    “Couldn’t you at least leave aside your iced
tea ritual today and take water instead?” She aimed her brown eyes
over the large can, disapproval flickering in them like two torches
on a shadowy passageway. “Give your body a break from the caloric
savagery.”
    “Like the one you need to give me from the
nosy assault you can’t seem to stop?” I asked her with ice-sharp
voice, the cold indigo in my eyes unearthing icebergs between
us.
    She planted her feet and stood there
silently, her shoulders slumped. I knew she could sense the cold
walls I’d erected, thin as a gauzy veil and hard as glass. But a
veil was fragile and glass was breakable, and she knew this, too.
She knew they weren’t as impervious and paramount as the ones I
placed with other people, but they were there, etching a scar
between us. And that hurt her.
    “Linda, I’m…” I caught my lower lip with my
teeth and gave a frustrated sigh. “This is why I need chocolates,
okay? Now you see it?”
    “No,” she said. “I don’t.”
    I looked aside, bringing down my shoulders
in despair and struggling to find a way to explain why my temper
was balancing on a wire instead of being tied up. And the candy
outburst gave me an idea. “I’m on my period,” I muttered, looking
back at her. It’d been a lie, of course. But she didn’t have a way
to know—unless she highlighted the days on that meticulous agenda
of hers, which wouldn’t have been as bizarre as one would think.
Her enhanced motherly instinct pushed her to do things like this.
That candy rebuke was one among hundreds.
    “So?” She shrugged off my excuse.
    “ So , I need an overflow of sugar
running through my body. It’s the only thing that calms me down.” I
pointed my eyes at her. “And you know what a hard case I can be if
I don’t wolf down sugary stuff.” That myth of girls turning into
creatures of hell—okay, maybe not a myth—every time their moontime came was absolutely true. Not every girl was
subject to this horrible allegory, but I was.
    Though, when wasn’t I?
    “Hah, you’re lying. It’s always ice cream
with you in those days, tons and tons of ice cream, even the
occasional brownie, but not Skittles or Snickers,” she said,
looking at the bottom of the tote cuddling my hip. “You only use
them when you’re enraged about something and when—”
    “Ice cream has sugar. And guess what?
Skittles and Snickers have sugar as well. It’s all the same.”
    “ And when ,” she repeated, squelching
my words aside. “Something involves your sister’s boyfriend.
Actually, you only eat this stuff when it’s Ian—and when
your Hot Tamales supplies have perished.”
    Having best friends was a wonderful thing,
so rewarding and special. A treasure, Gran would’ve said—a rail one
could hold on to when falling. But