Free This Raging Light by Estelle Laure Page A

ridden my bike in so long. I get on the tow path and pump as hard as I can, till all my muscles burn and my lungs flap and struggle. It’s flat ground and I pass some joggers, but pretty soon I’ve blown past everyone, past the rocks, past the town, and I’m jamming up the trail, sweating hard, watching as green whizzes by.
    Thinking. If I forge Mom’s signature on the papers, Wren will be asked all kinds of questions and someone could figure this out. It would be another risk. If I don’t, Mrs. LaRouche will get more and more suspicious and we could be in danger anyway. There’s no winning here that I can see.
    I jump off my bike and park it by a tree. I venture a little ways into the woods and find a place to lie down. I’ve only been here about a minute when a great swooping thing circles, dives, and rips a branch off the tree directly above me. It makes a great cracking noise like a gunshot, blows the air apart. It all happens so quickly that I almost don’t register that it’s a bald eagle, a prehistoric, violent thing. A massive thing.
    As I watch it fly away I wonder what it means. If there are such things as portents like Eden said, what could it ever signify? And then loneliness, brutal and merciless, wields wicked fists and my fingernails scrape at the dirt. I am so lonely that people in China must feel it rippling all the way through the earth floor. I lie back and stare up at the patch that used to be a branch, broken and beige at its severed arm.
    I ride home slowly, and when I get there I sign the papers.

Day 53
    I am on my third cup of coffee as I push through the high school doors Monday morning, and it’s doing nothing except fraying my nerves. Ugh, English. Ugh, thinking. Ugh, walking. And oh gosh please no talking. I pause at my locker, balance the paper coffee cup between my teeth, and start piling the books into my backpack. No one talks to me. Eden isn’t anywhere. I only see Shane, who gives me a little pat on the shoulder as she cruises by with her in-school friends. Our friendship doesn’t really translate, but it’s nice to know she’s there. I don’t have anything to say anyway. My mind is blank. I am not thinking about bills or Wren or laundry or my suck suck suckish parents. Frankly, stupid hard life, I don’t give a damn.
    This bleary state is the only thing that explains how Digby sneaks up on me without me sensing him, since I am always on the lookout for him lately. I haven’t seen him since I practically threw him out of my house. Eden either. She must be timing it that way, since her locker is right next to mine.
    â€œHey,” Digby says, in that way he has, like he’s not sure how to make words come out of his mouth. “You’re here.”
    â€œHey,” I return. “Yeah, I am.”
    He lingers over me, close, but not too close. The hallway is emptying out as people filter into classrooms.
    â€œI was having thoughts,” he says, tucking his thumb under his backpack strap.
    â€œWell, that makes one of us,” I say.
    â€œOh.” He shuffles a little. “Yeah, I bet.”
    â€œSo, what thoughts?”
    â€œNo.” He smiles, and I realize he doesn’t smile very often. “I mean, I was thinking maybe if today isn’t a test day or something, I thought maybe you would want to get out of here.”
    I feel a lot of things at once. The urge to run. The urge to jump on him and see whether he would catch me or let me fall. I am clearly mentally unstable due to exhaustion.
    â€œWhen was the last time you ditched school?” he asks.
    â€œFriday,” I say.
    â€œReally?” His face tenses. “Yeah, I didn’t see you around.”
    â€œBut before that, never.” I fake-cough. “I’ve been very sick with a fever and cough due to cold.”
    He pulls on my T-shirt with a thumb and forefinger. “Come on.”
    The bell