Untethered Read Online Free Page A

Nobody wants to spend them in St. Anthony’s High School.
    Sam drags behind us. I wonder if he’s thinking about Dad. No, I’m sure he is.
    “How’s he taking it?” Cassie whispers.
    I shrug. Sam’s the sensitive one in the family. But he hasn’t broken down. Neither of us have. Not yet. Mom’s the only one who’s falling apart.
    We turn down the lake road and Lake Michigan stretches before us, a perfect aquamarine. That fake-looking blue. Like the pictures you see in vacation brochures for places on the ocean. I should adore Lake Michigan, so like an ocean — so big, so blue. And I guess I do, for the way it looks. But don’t force me into water. I panic around anything wet. No baths for me. I’m a shower girl, all the way — and even then, I scrub up fast.
    The last time I swam was when I was twelve. Cassie and I were down at North Beach on a really windy summer day. The kind that makes high, white-capped waves perfect for surfing or sailing. Or drowning. We’d been jumping them most of the afternoon when suddenly we found ourselves in too deep and too tired to swim back. The undertow kept yanking us out further and further. We’d try to make a break for shore but the water just sucked us back.
    “Sylvie!” Cassie’s pale face was gray with fear. She clawed at me. She grasped my swimsuit straps, my neck, her nails digging into my skin, pulling me under with her. Water filled my nose. I sputtered around, any toehold in the sand lost with the next whitecap. We were in over our heads. I was sure the lifeguard couldn’t even see us. If we were going to make it out, one of us had to be able to call for help. “Get on my shoulders,” I screamed to Cass when I was able to get my head above water for a second. “And yell.”
    Cassie climbed onto me, her feet grinding into my hips, her hand gripping my hair. Her whole body was shaking.
    I can still feel the weight of her thighs pushing against my neck, can still taste the panic every time a wave hit and I swallowed lake water instead of air. And I can still remember losing grip on my body, just as the undertow got the best of me. I watched from above as we started to drown.
    I was yanked back to my body as the lifeguard dropped us down onto the sand.
    “Summer in Racine can fool you into thinking you actually live someplace worth being, can’t it?” Cassie asks now, looking out at the lake. Obviously, she’s not as scarred by our near-drowning incident as I am. She took swimming in Phys Ed our freshman year no problem. I had my mom write a note claiming “psychological trauma” to get out of it. That was a vile year. Tori Thompson saw the note and it got around school. Everyone called me “Psycho Skinny Sylvie Sydell.” Then, of course, came the bits where I went cataplexic and my muscles melted while I accidentally left my body in class.
    Let’s just say the “Psycho” nickname has stuck.
    “Racine sucks any time of year, Cass. And so does St. Anthony’s,” I mumble. “I’d better not have any classes with Tori Thompson.”
    “Ugh. Or Ashley Green.”
    “Tori’s worse,” I say. “But maybe I’ll have a class with Kevin this year.”
    We make our way onto school grounds, then Cassie stops short. “Speak of the devil.”
    Snaking between cars in the parking lot are Kevin, Bryce Hensley, Ashley Green, and Kevin’s appendage, Samantha Bauer. Kevin and Bryce are together, while the girls follow behind.
    “Oh, no.” Both Ashley and Samantha are wearing mini-skirts and push-up bras. I look down at my covered legs and navy tank-top with the built-in padding. Luckily, I notice just in time that the foam insert where my left boob should be is pushed in, creating some sort of crater instead of cleavage. I shove my hand inside my top and poke it out, trying to look as casual as I can under the circumstances.
    They’re two feet in front of us now and that same giddy, nauseous feeling I get every time I see Kevin pulses through me. He’s