Spark by Rachael Craw EPUB & PDF

Spark by Rachael Craw EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online

• Status: Available For Free Download
• Author: Rachael Craw
• Language: English
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Format: PDF / EPUB
• Size: 2 MB
• Price: Free

SYMPTOMS

I jolt up from the oor, panting, half-strangled by my two-sizes-tooshort pyjamas and a sweat-soaked sheet.
How did I get on the oor?
Where is the carpet?
It takes me a couple of desperate seconds to untangle and gure
out I’m not in my bedroom back home, but in Aunt Miriam’s spare
room in New Hampshire. Grief, forgotten in sleep, returns heavy in
my chest. I sink onto the side of the bed, leaning elbows on knees,
willing away the nightmare-panic, trying to hear past the thlackthlack of my pulse. I should be immune to it by now, waking

terried in the dark; it’s been going on for months, even before it all
went down with Mom. I knit my trembling ngers together, try to
ignore the uncomfortable zip-zap of pins and needles in my spine.
The zip-zap and the bad dreams go together – started at the same
time – but unlike the bad dreams, the zip-zap lasts all day.
Sometimes it’s a tepid zz, other times, like angry bees.

But pins and needles belong in the feet, or a leg that’s been sat on,
an arm that’s been slept on – not the spine. If it were only the
growth spurt and loss of appetite, I wouldn’t worry, but all of it
together …
I sit there, staring at the boxes stacked in the corner of the room,
concentrating on slowing my breaths. It usually helps calm the
palpitations. I should have unpacked the boxes by now – it’s not
healthy. Miriam’s gone to a lot of trouble to make me welcome: new
paint on the walls, new quilt on the bed, the antique wrought-iron
headboard polished to gleaming. The thoughtfulness in the details
makes me ache, from the fringed lamp and the stack of books she’s
placed by the bed, to the box of tissues on top. No doubt she has
visions of me sobbing myself to sleep every night. The desk and
chair under the window, the ornate mirror above the dresser – all
new. I’m grateful, but my boxes still sit untouched, and Miriam
pretends not to notice.
She won’t push me.

But I’ve been here for weeks, haven’t I? Maybe even a month? A
lot can happen in a month: a bad cough, medical tests, a diagnosis.
Back when it mattered, I knew the number of days until Mom’s lab
results; the hours between doctor’s rounds; the minutes that passed
before her meds kicked in; how long I could hold my breath,

waiting for the crease of pain to lift from her clammy brow. Then I
kept time like a stingy accountant. Now I let it pour through my
ngers, let it escape from my life like heat from a house with the
door left carelessly open. Maybe that’s what makes the urgency in
my dream so alarming. It’s nothing like my real life.

But I should care and I should make an eort. It’s not like I’ve
been forced to live with a stranger in an uncaring home in a town I
don’t know.

EPUB