Free Siphon (Siphon Chronicles, Book One) by Cyndi Goodgame Page A

it go.  Daniel is here for now and you will just have to deal with it.  Go back to your table and go on with whatever it is that you do.  You knew we were over long ago and I’m not afraid to make sure all your friends know I never gave it up for you.  Any girl who has should have had more self-respect for themselves before they let a STD infested snake like you take anything from them.”
    Foster snorted, “They liked every minute of it little Lark the prude.”
    I stepped around Daniel who’d grown quiet for the last back and forth word fight between the snake and me.  I felt, not saw, that Daniel was that much bigger than Foster. His arms alone rivaled that of a concrete block next to Foster’s puny household bricks.  That’s not to say that Foster isn’t strong, because I knew he worked out and ran a mile each morning before school.  Vanity was his calling card.  It is just that Daniel was huge in comparison to Foster’s muscular, lean side.  I screwed my head back on straight and gave Foster the piece of my mind I was holding back, “I could take things from you that would change your life forever you piece of crap for a human.”
    A hand curled around my own and squeezed.  I felt it in the recesses of my brain but only registered that it was there, not protecting me.  I’d never had a friend who would stand up for me like that.  Sam was great, but in the heat of battle, she would hide under a rock and disappear.  With him, something made me feel stronger and able to stand up for myself.  I was braver.
    “Like you’re some witch that can curse me into a beast or something.  You know we all know you are different Lark.  Is that what you are Lark, a witch?”  His red face looked like a madman. The moment passed like Krueger or Mike Myers might jump out and take us all down.  I was so angry.  I drew in a huge breath and before I knew it I was sucking in something other than the oily air of the pizza place. It was always the same. The air would still, then the hum would move through me like a silent motor.  Something like motion sickness would hit me. I was taking a year from Foster and couldn’t stop it. 
    I couldn’t stop. 
    Not in my own skin, I didn’t feel my body being jolted in a spin and my mouth being overtaken by another.  Lips. Tongue.
    Someone was kissing me.
    Euphoria.
    Seconds.  Tick.  Tock.
    I came down from the high just as his lips released me.
    “I didn’t know what else to do,” Daniel whispered into my mouth.
    Reality hit me all at once.  First, Daniel kissed me in front of a large enough population of the senior students.  And second, I was just about to take another year from Foster.  And it wasn’t through kissing.  Something wasn’t right about it. I never felt the song ring out in my head, but Foster was losing a year either way.
    I turned fast in his arms and faced where I’d just stood.  Foster’s paralyzed face was stuck in a twisted reaction of some kind of demented smile and little birdies flying around the top of his head.  Did I fry his brain?
    “Foster.  FOSTER.  Are you okay?”  I shook him by the arms feeling Daniel fall back with my leap.
    Foster shook his head to rid himself of the dizzying affect before saying, “Whoa.  That was like a good backseat Twister!”
    “Whoa man.  What did she do to you?  Chick never touched you, man.” Foster’s best friend Mike did his overboard surfer dude talk and waved a hand in his face. “What’s wrong with him?”  Mike turned to me.
    Foster slowly became more alert as his face changed to anger like a snap of the finger.  His voice resonated up an octave, “You.  You did something to me, you witch.  You are a witch.  Stay away from me.”
    He pushed off the ice cream machine he’d been leaning on and knocked over his friend Mike.  His words were the solid reminder of why I don’t take from the young. “Crap.  I feel like I was stabbed by a knife.  Keep that witch away from