Wake Unto Me Read Online Free

they’d be relieved to have her gone. Life would be easier and happier for them. They could focus on the boys and their sports, which is all they wanted to do, anyway.
    In the meantime, Caitlyn would go out into the world, where the people would be new, where there was culture and history and varied ways of thinking. Where she’d live in a castle on a cliff. And where maybe, just maybe, she would find people like herself.
    And if she was really lucky, maybe she’d find that guy of her dreams: the one who wasn’t perfect, but who was, somehow, perfect for her .
    The possibilities stretched before her, and she imagined in France a world full of sunlight and castles, art and laughter, and a boy who would see into her soul.
    She was leaving Spring Creek, and life was never going to be the same.

CHAPTER Two
     
    JANUARY 20
     
    What was she forgetting? Caitlyn’s tired gaze skipped over the shambles of her bedroom, trying to decide what else to cram into her makeshift luggage. Weariness and tension made decision making almost impossible.
    Stuffed animal?
    No. She’d look childish.
    Favorite books?
    Too heavy.
    Her eye fixed on her bulletin board, and her heart skipped a beat. How could she have almost forgotten that? She plucked the tarot card of the Wheel of Fortune from the lattice of ribbons on the board. It showed a wheel floating in the sky, covered in esoteric symbols. Fantastical creatures surrounded it: a sphinx, a snake, Anubis, and four winged creatures in the corners of the card. In ballpoint pen, her mother had written a few cryptic words along the edge of the card: “the heart in darkness.”
    Caitlyn had always taken the words as a warning against bouts of melancholy. An uncle had once told her that her mother had been moody, given to dark thoughts and sometimes completely withdrawing into herself. Even though Caitlyn had been only four years old at the time, she wondered if her mother had seen hints of a similar personality in her, and had tried—however ineffectually—to warn Caitlyn to struggle against her nature.
    Caitlyn had researched the card online, had even asked a fortune teller about it once, but she had never found an answer to why her mother had given it to her. The Wheel of Fortune’s main meanings were “fate” and “change,” which seemed about as ambiguous—or obvious—a message as you could leave a person on the day you died. Had her mother simply meant, “This is my fate,” and then written the words about the heart in darkness to ask Caitlyn not to grieve?
    But what kind of person left that type of message for a four-year-old? Only a madwoman.
    Holding the card, Caitlyn sank onto the end of her bed, exhausted by packing and by her own nerves. It was almost one in the morning, and in a couple of hours she and her dad would start the two-hour drive to the airport. The rest of the house was quiet, her parents and brothers sleeping. She should be sleeping, too, but she knew she’d just lie staring at the clock if she undressed and crawled into bed.
    She should have been ecstatic that she was almost on her way; that the day had finally come. Instead, she was haunted by a sense of loss and uncertainty. Her friendship with Sarah and Jacqui had started to weaken the day she told them she was going to France. As kids, she and Jacqui and Sarah had thought they’d be best friends forever. Caitlyn would never have guessed that those bonds could break so quickly, as they chose their separate paths through life. After she had told them, they’d been surprised and then excited, but as the weeks went by and they’d gotten used to the idea, they seemed to lose interest in both Caitlyn and her plans. It was almost as if they saw no point in investing further effort in her, since she’d be gone soon, whereas they still had boys and classes to worry about.
    Or maybe it was the other way around, Caitlyn admitted to herself. Maybe she’d lost interest in them , for the same reasons.
    Were all