Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

night, shivering and alone, she felt a peculiar joy. It was something akin to the feeling she always had at the end of each semester when it was time for her to go home. It made her smile and hug her knees to her chest, counting the weeks until Christmas break and remembering the taste of Belle Haven snow.

As Rachel drove Paul’s Impala back to school on Sunday afternoon, she vowed to keep her sojourn a secret. The little town on Cape Cod with its one-of-a-kind inn, its clean, deserted coves, its trademark skiffs and oysters was a place she hoped to return to again and again throughout her life. She had no intention of sharing it.

Rachel was not yet sure what she wanted to do with her life, what sort of work might best suit her. She had not really defined her dreams. She was not even entirely sure what sort of person she wanted to be and, so soon after Harry, was having trouble imagining herself with another man. But this time away from school had restored her equilibrium and left her hungry for trustworthy people who had good manners and things to teach her that she wanted to learn. She had already lived in one such place, was now leaving another, and was sure there must be many such secrets kept out of sight, around the bend, on the other side of a thousand bridges. She had made up her mind to find them.

Rachel felt rested and relaxed as she opened the door to her room and turned on the lights. No one had warned her that every kind of pain is worse when you go toward it unprepared.

“You had an emergency call from home. Call Dean Franklin immediately.” Someone had pushed the note under her door. It had her name on it and the dean’s telephone number. She stood there and looked down at it. Then she looked around her room, saw the books and the potted plants, blinked at the colors in the curtains her mother had sewn for her, and wondered who had left a beer bottle on her windowsill.

Several of her neighbors arrived then, having heard her return, and told her that her phone had been ringing, off and on, for more than a day. They had heard people knocking at her door several times, seen Dean Franklin come and go, and knew something was wrong. But no one knew what. Call us if you need anything, they said, and left her alone.

When Rachel phoned the dean, he told her that he’d be right over to see her, but she shrieked at him to tell her what was wrong. So he told her that her parents had been killed in an automobile accident. They had died instantly, he said. Without pain. But Rachel knew of nothing on earth that could promise her this was true. As if to blunt what he said, the dean kept talking. And Rachel continued to listen, holding the phone like a gun to her ear, as if letting go of it meant making a choice to go on with her life.

Her parents, said the dean, had been on their way to have their few, peerless apples pressed into cider. Rachel loved apple cider, and it had always been their tradition, at Thanksgiving, to indulge her minor passion. They had not known, she suddenly realized, of her decision to spend this Thanksgiving at school, with friends. They had not known, either, that she had lately discovered a liking for wine, that she had not given a thought to the cider she would be missing back home. She realized, as she spoke with the dean, that her parents had died while she sat on a small, white beach, wrapped in wind. She was horrified that both of them had left without her. She ached with gratitude that they had left together.

It wasn’t until she was on her way to Belle Haven on the bus that night that she felt the keys to the Impala in her pocket—they were like teeth against her thigh—and remembered that she had once known a boy named Harry Gallagher.

Chapter 7

        During his first hours of flight, Kit allowed the road to lead him. He simply didn’t care where he was going or when he would get there. As he drove, he found nothing entertaining in the moving mosaic beyond his windshield. Nothing from the outside world vexed him. Nothing alarmed him. There was enough boiling inside him to occupy every sense he had. He simply drove.

When he grew hungry, he stopped at an all-night diner where everything tasted of the same rancid grease, was later violently sick in a musky pine forest, and eventually parked in the corner of a deserted rest area and slept until dawn.

Kit woke early the next morning, cold, cramped, and disoriented, unable to see through the car’s foggy windows and unsure what he might find beyond them. With his palm he cleared enough of the glass to see that he was parked near a brick building. He was in a rest area. The thought of fresh water made him sit up straight. Water was one of many things he had not thought to bring with him.

Armed with his overnight bag, Kit hurried into the rest house, put on a fresh shirt, brushed his teeth at a rusty sink, splashed cold water on his face, did his best to restore himself. He was exhausted. He was not sure where he was. As clean as he could manage, he returned to the lobby of the rest house and found a map mounted in a Plexiglas case. On it was a small arrow and the words YOU ARE HERE.

Western Massachusetts. The Berkshires. He turned away from the map and made his way out into the open air. Blinking at the morning sky, Kit was astonished to find himself among mountains. He hadn’t noticed them in the dark, nor had he felt the