Free Unleashed by Rachel McClellan

Two. One.
    "Maybe if you wouldn't spend so much time messing around in Steph's garage, you could actually get a real job and help me out," she said, smoothing back stray hairs into her tight ponytail.
    Claire didn't want to fight this early in the morning, but she couldn't help it. It was so easy to get sucked in. "I'm not messing around. If you would just hear me sing you’d know that. I'm very serious about the band and one day it's going to pay off, so lay off okay?"
    Claire’s mom stood up and went to the sink, tossing her mug into it. Claire was surprised it didn’t break.
    "That's what everybody thinks,” she said. “They all have big dreams for themselves, but then reality hits and they find themselves getting a real job like the rest of us. As soon as you get this, you can stop wasting your time."
    Shaking her head, Claire set down her spoon and pushed herself away from the table, her food barely touched. "I'm done."
    Claire’s mother placed her hands on the counter and leaned into it. "You think I'm being mean, but I'm trying to help you. The real world is cruel and hard, Claire. You need to learn—”
    Claire stopped listening and instead focused on the morning news. A man in a dark blue suit was saying, "The gas station was robbed at approximately 2:00 a.m. The female clerk on duty was attacked and taken to the hospital for medical attention. The suspect is still at large."
    "Claire? Are you listening?"
    Claire waved a hand at her. "Yeah. Yeah. Give up on my dreams."
    A horn honked outside. She stood up. "That's Kate. Gotta go."
    She scooped up her backpack and went to the door. Her mother came out of the kitchen, face red and lines twisted into angry creases. Before she could say another insulting comment, Claire gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Have a good day, Mom.” And then opened and closed the front door.
    She didn’t look back to see her mom’s reaction. There probably wasn’t one, but one day she hoped the ghosts from her past would move on.
    It was a sunny, yet cool morning and the scent of the ocean was strong. The air chilled Claire’s skin and she almost turned back to get a jacket, but a letter on her front step caught her attention. She reached down and picked it up. Her name was scribbled on the backside.
    Claire walked to Kate’s car wondering what it could be. She opened the passenger door, only to be accosted by blaring rap music.
    "How can you stand to listen to this?" she asked and slid into the seat.
    "It's a rap day, can't you feel it?" Kate was tapping her hand on the steering wheel.
    Claire closed the door. "Can you at least turn it down?"
    Kate turned it down, just barely, and put the car in gear. "Mind if we stop to get a drink before school? I need some caffeine."
    Claire turned the letter over in her hand. "Sure. Whatever."
    "What's that?" Kate asked.
    "A letter. It was on my porch."
    "To you?"
    She nodded.
    "Aren't you going to open it?"
    Claire stared at her scribbled name on the white paper. "It's a little weird, don't you think?"
    Kate glanced sideways at her, keeping one eye on the road. "How so?"             
    "That someone left a letter on my porch in the middle of the night."
    She nodded. "Right. The peeping Tom. You don't know it was him. Just open it already."
    She took a deep breath, then slipped her finger into the flap of the envelope and tore it along its edge. Very carefully she opened it, almost expecting a spider to crawl out, but what she saw instead made her wish it had been a spider. A spider made sense.
    "What is it?" Kate asked.
    She covered the contents with her hands. "Pull over.”
    "Huh?"
    "Pull over, now!"
    Kate steered the car onto the side of the road and stopped the car. "What’s wrong?"
    Claire removed a stack of money and handed it to Kate.
    Kate flipped through it. "There's hundreds of dollars in here!" she said and began counting it.
    Claire didn’t look over. She was too busy removing a torn piece of paper from the