Renegade Runner Nicole Conway (christmas read aloud txt) 📖

was pulled up into a bun, arranged to hide the bald spots where it had already begun falling out.

“M-Mom?” My voice shook.

“It’s okay, Brinna,” she rasped, never looking up. “It’s just the medicine.”

“Do you want me to bring you some water?”

“No, honey. It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

I couldn’t answer.

Mom all but collapsed back over the toilet and threw up again.

I shut my eyes tightly and moved away, running back across the hall to my room. I tried not to make a sound as I shut the door. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to hear her, though. That wasn’t it at all.

Climbing onto my bed, I grabbed my pillow and buried my face into it to scream. Why was this happening? What had we done wrong to deserve it? Weren’t there other, worse people in the world who deserved it? Why Mom?

My eyes swam with tears as I sat up slowly, looking back down to my heap of papers on the floor. Slowly, I scooted to the edge and stared down at all of them. All my big plans. My ridiculous dreams. My hours of work and training. Sweat and tears.

It all seemed to stupid now. Useless. Pointless.

I couldn’t do it. Not now. Not while she needed me.

I slipped off the bed and began grabbing all the papers. I crumpled them up and smashed them into the garbage can underneath my desk. Then I sat back, breathless.

Defeated.

“Brinna?” Mom’s voice came from the doorway.

I whipped around. Oh no—how long had she been watching?

“What are you doing?” she asked.

My mouth screwed up. My chin trembled and my heart pounded so hard it felt like it might launch right out of my chest. I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want to.

Without a word, Mom stepped past me and dragged the garbage can out from under my desk. She took out all my forms and papers one by own, smoothing them, and placing them in a stack in front of me. “You’re not allowed to give up, Brinna,” she said at last, her voice strangely calm.

“B-But, Mom, you—we can’t! Not when everything is so—”

She shook her head, studying me with her weary eyes sunken and bleary. “Everything will always be complicated. That’s just life. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s not even good—not unless we make it that way. Do you understand?”

I didn’t. But I was too much of a coward to admit it.

“This is your life, Brinna. Not mine. Not anyone else’s. This is your work. It’s your legacy,” she continued, sliding the stack of papers closer to me. “And I’m not going to let you give up.”

“But I can’t do this without you,” I sniffled. My voice caught and I leaned forward, burying my face in my hands as I cried. “I don’t want to.”

Mom scooted in closer, putting her arms around me and hugging me tightly. She didn’t smell like herself anymore. She smelled like the sharp, pungent chemicals of her medicines, vomit, and sweat. Her skin didn’t feel soft and warm anymore. It was cold and clammy, rough and dry.

But she was still my mom.

“It’s not about me, honey. You were made for great things.” She spoke softly against my ear. “So you have to run, Brinna. Whatever else happens, you have to promise me that you’ll keep running.”

24

DOCTOR, DOCTOR

My eyes flew open and I screamed for Mom, my body thrashing out of control to grasp at the empty air. But she wasn’t there. She was a billion miles away.

My heart pounded and my skin was slippery and drenched in a cold sweat as I sat, shivering in the dark, still strapped into my seat. Where the hell was I? What had happened?

Out of the gloom, an all-too-familiar scowling face appeared right in front of me, lit by the faint light of what must have been the alien equivalent of a glowstick or emergency flashlight. “Brinna, you gotta calm down for me,” Phox urged as he crouched down beside my seat. “You’re all right. Take some deep breaths.” He held up the glowing cylindrical stick, studying me under the gentle blue light as he reached for the emergency release on my harness.

I shuddered and looked away. A dream—it was just a dream. Not real. But, oh god, why had it felt so real? Shutting my eyes tightly, I drew my knees in close to my chest and fought to slow my breathing.

The touch of something warm and rough against my cheek made me pause. My face—Phox was cradling my cheek in his hand. “B-Brinna,” he said, repeating my name. “Look at me.”

I stared back at him, my heart pounding out of control and making my vision swim. One of his pupils was still a good bit bigger than the other, and he had a frightening amount of his strange, dark blue blood dried around his nose and mouth. The skin around one of his eyes had turned an unsettling shade of dark, dusky blue.

Little by little, it all came creeping back. The storm. Sienne. My stupid plan.

“We … We crashed,” I realized aloud.

“N-Not like it was the first time,” he retorted as he helped me out of the straps. His hands shook as he reached around me carefully, pulling the harness away so I could get free. “At least we l-landed right-side-up this time, right?”

My body ached as I slowly got to my feet. My head immediately swam a little, forcing me to grab on to his chest to steady myself.

“You good?” he rasped, his voice tight and breathless.

“Yeah.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, trying to soothe the throbbing soreness from whiplash as I looked around. The cabin of our ship was still dark and the engines were silent. There was only the faint, muted howl of the wind outside mingled with the weird, whooshing of the sand and grit raining against the hull and windshield. “Where’s Sienne?”

“N-Not sure,” he admitted as he moved back, slipping out of my grasp and shuffling from the cockpit