Finding a Way by Marie Fitzgerald (black books to read .TXT) 📖

Not that it actually hurt, I just don’t like physical contact with anyone, especially when it comes to him.
“Please, don’t try to fix anything.” I pleaded. “Just don’t. Please.”
With that, he nodded and let my arm go.
***
The girl had about given me panic attack when I couldn’t locate her. After twenty minutes of searching, I discovered her sitting on a random rock that looked like a solid beanbag. Regrettably, it didn’t really have the comforting and homey feeling of one as I sat next to Micah. Though it did beat sitting on cactus. Which, by the way, you never want to do, unless of course it’s for a very large sum of money, then it might be worth it.
“If its Grace, then I forgive you, but don’t ever tell anyone else what I’m thinking ever again.” She spoke, assuming it was someone other than me. “Shane, if it’s you, then it turns out that Kori is right after all. You are a jerk. Unlike her, I don’t think that you are evil and I’m forgiving you.”
I would have stopped her ranting sooner, but I just couldn’t resist hearing that I was right about Shane being a jerk, the fact that someone agreed with me about him was enough to finally stop her.
“What about me? Are you gonna forgive me?” I asked,
“No, because you didn’t do anything wrong,” she answered, turning her head to finally face me. She should have known that it was me all along because I was sitting right next to her, squished in with her to fit into the curves of the rock. Still very uncomfortable. Again, still better than sitting on cactus. “You never do anything wrong.”
I wanted to snort at the remark because of how completely fictitious and conjured it really was. So what if her eyes it was true? It wasn’t true when you looked deep into my soul. There was so many things wrong with me, I’m surprised that karma still lets me live. But then again, Shane and his father are still alive. Maybe I should stop mentioning them so much, it was ruining my content mood for right now. Just enjoy the moment, I told myself, it’s okay to let yourself be complimented once and a while. Yeah, that is except when it’s a total and complete lie, which this compliment was. Not that it was meant to be a lie, but why accept it when you knew that it was?
“That’s not true.” I objected.
“You never do anything to make fun of people or make them mad. It’s not like you love making people’s lives miserable. Even if you really don’t like them. Everything that you do is for us, never for yourself.” She pointed out.
She was so wrong…and right at the same time. The reason I took such good care of everyone was for a very selfish reason; I couldn’t stand to have anything happen to them. I would die before I would let anything happen to them. Except for Shane, of course, but at the same time, I wasn’t going to go out of my way to kill him. Basically because everyone else treated him as part as a group…like a brother that they never had. I know that Red has always wanted a brother around his age, he didn’t want a little sister, and he wanted a guy to talk to. Messing that up for him would really mess things up between Red and I. Anyways, yes, I was very selfless on the outside, and always making sure that everyone was taken care of before I was. But the reasoning behind it was selfish in nature. I didn’t do it just because I was a motherly person (because, in truth, I’m really not), but because I wouldn’t survive without them.
“You must remember something that I’ve done wrong before. At least one,” I persisted. Wow, I really can’t believe that I was encouraging Micah to find something wrong with me.
“Well there is one thing…” her voice trailed off and she didn’t finish, like she was making a dramatic pause.
“And what would that be?” I pressured.
She hesitated before she answered. “The way that you treat Shane”- ugh! I really should have seen this coming. So much for not thinking about him tonight- “I mean he’s tried so hard to make things up to you for whatever he did, and he doesn’t even know what the hell he did wrong other than being born to the wrong guy. I just wonder what the heck he did to make you hate him so much.”
“Well, his dad is kind of not the most trustworthy person in the world. He was raised by that guy,” I defended, using my timeless excuse for him. “You know what his father has done to people. Who’s to say that he won’t do that to us?”
“You’ve made that clear numerous times already and I’ve only been with you for a month. If you’ve had him along for the last nine months, if you’re this horrible to him now, I can’t imagine how bad it was for him before I came along.”
“Well, well, well, look who is so defensive of him.” I pointed out, maybe going a little too far after that episode back at camp.
“As a daughter of a former psychiatrist, I have to help you realize that you’re the one hiding your true-
“Wait…where are you going with this?” I cut her off.
“Sometimes we think that we hate someone when it’s really just sexual tension and-
“Okay, I came here to give you a pep talk, not the other way around. I definitely did not come here to get some explanation on why I hate Shane. And sexual tension? What did your mom teach you at such a young age?”
“She didn’t, I read one of the books on her shelves. “
Well, that made it all better, didn’t it? Jeez, she’s only fourteen and reading about sexual tension? Okay, maybe that’s old enough to know about all that stuff, but I would think it would be from movies and T.V shows, not from a book that she read? I still can’t believe she would mistake pure hate for ‘sexual tension’. Obviously, her mother hadn’t taught her enough about body language and such things as that. Or maybe it was the books fault.
“Evidently, you’re over everything if you’re accusing me of hiding from my feelings.” I said. “So why don’t we go back to camp and go to sleep.” I suggested.
“I’ll get ready for bed while everyone else is busy de-setting up the tent and putting out the fire, okay?” She told me.
“Yeah, I might just go to sleep in these.” I mean I was already wearing a hat, sweatshirt, scarf, a short and long sleeve shirt underneath the sweat shirt, jeans underneath the sweatpants and long johns underneath jeans and I was also wearing really fizzy socks. Why take all of it off tonight, get all cold and have to warm up again when I was just going to have to get dressed again tomorrow? We had a limited capacity of water on the RV and I didn’t want to waste in on a shower when we would probably get some more tomorrow.
“Hopefully all of this stuff will be cleared out by the morning,” she said optimistically like she always is.
“You mean the sexual tension?” I asked, teasing her.
“No, that’s between you guys. I am too you for that.” She corrected. “I mean awkwardness between Shane and I. Until you guys figure out how to stop denying your feelings, you’re always going to have sexual tension.” God, I hated it when she took me so literally. And I was going to be scared for life from this conversation.
***
Everyone was peacefully and serenely sleeping tonight. The boys were in here tonight because we’d packed up the tent before we went to sleep. We’d all be bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning. For those who weren’t, well, they would continue sleeping like the rest of the lazy kids their age.
The talk with Micah was still sticking with me, three hours later, reeling in my head. One of her questions that she had asked really bothered me. ‘What did he do to make you hate him so much?’ she had asked.
Of course everyone knew about his father. He is the head of a government assassination corporation. Former Government Corporation turned rogue and mafia-like. The U.S government stopped funding them, hoping that when they ran out of money, they’d stop functioning. But they were dead wrong. Once all the limitation and regulations for the funding from the government was gone, they prospered and flourished more than the government ever could have anticipated, and quicker too. However, they attempt to stop this thing. Too much power, too many people involved, too many connections, too much money and too much lack of compassion for life and humanity. With all of these weapons, they were to powerful to defeat. It turned from assassinations with careful planning so they wouldn’t hurt any innocent bystander into murdering for not agreeing with them. It also turned into human lab experiencing and new torture methods to make people talk. They work with our government to this day. When they do something illegal and immoral, Uncle Sam just turns its back.
You might think that they were a typical association like CIA or FBI. They still hunt terrorists and go on SQUAT team like missions with hostage situations. But it’s whoever pays them the most money to do it. Since our country is one of the richest in the world, it has enough money to pay them. You don’t want to make enemies with the U.S government, if you’re going to learn one thing in life. Yet at the same time, the U.S knew that you didn’t want to make enemies with Shane’s father. So why not work together?
Everything was going just fine for my family, along with my father, who happened to work for those people. When he found out what horrible things that he was actually helping them do, he was going to resign his manager position in our region. The day he went to headquarters for the state to tell them to find a new person to be in charge of our region, he overheard a few things that scared him to death. He found out that they were going around the country and searching for kids with ‘abilities.’ He panicked, thinking about Red and I. Even though Red and I never knew anything about any damn powers that these people were searching for. So we set off, on the run, exactly three months after I turned fourteen. About a year and a half later, we were caught while relaxing for a day on the beach. They killed my parents, but Red and I had scrammed out of there. I had absolutely no idea how to swim, but that didn’t occur to me as Red had hauled me into the ocean with him, knowing that if they were going to kill my parents, there was nothing that he could do about it and he might as well save me while he could. By some miracle I learned how to swim in a split second and we swam farther and farther away from shore, hoping and praying that they didn’t know about us.
Everyone in our group had a special ability one way or the other, whether it just being out of the ordinary, or it was like actual, real freaky psychic type stuff. Grace was a mind reader, in case you didn’t figure that out before; very annoying but useful if we wanted to get information out of someone.