Beyond the Horizon by Bea Paige EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Bea Paige
- Language: English
- Genre: New Adult & College Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Connie
I HAVE A THING FOR SHELLS. The delicate shapes, the pretty colours,
the sharp points and curved edges. My bedroom is full of them. Jars line my
window ledge, each one filled to the brim with all manner of shells. Not one
is the same, but all of them are beautiful in their own way.
When I replace the lid to one of the jars and pop it back next to the others,
I see my friends Jack, Alice and Georgia walking up the garden path. They’re
laughing, happy to be getting off the island, even if it is only for a few days.
My best friends since we were toddlers, we’ve grown up together. Just a few
weeks ago we all graduated from our tiny village school, leaving only a
handful of children behind.
Living on a small island means that our school is made up of one class
and twelve kids ranging from four to eighteen, eight kids now we’ve left.
Come September, my three best friends will be going to Kent University in
Canterbury, but this four-day minibreak to the mainland is a chance to check
out their halls of residence and the bars and clubs they’re so looking forward
to getting drunk in. In contrast, I refuse to leave the island. It’s my sanctuary.
I don’t long for the fun of the city like they all do. I’d rather be here, safe,
surrounded by the ocean, cut off from the rest of the world and all the trouble
it harbours.
Below, Grandma Silva calls for me to answer the door and I run out of
my room, bounding down the stairs two at a time. I rush towards my friends
in a whirl of happiness and excitement, not because I’m leaving the island
with them, but because I feel like the universe is smiling down on me today.
As though something good, something life changing is about to happen.
My grandma thinks I’m ‘empathic’. According to her I’m just like my
mother, that I have an innate ability to know when both good and bad things
are going to happen.
I still don’t know whether it’s a gift or a curse. Maybe it’s a little bit of
both.
The day my parents died was one of those days when my ‘gift’ felt like a
curse. A few days before they died I’d watched them drive away, my heart
galloping and my stomach churning. The hair on the back of my neck had
stood on end, my skin prickling as goosebumps scattered in an unpleasant
rash up my arms. I remember my mum turning to me and waving and I’d felt
this heavy kind of feeling in my chest. I’d begged them not to go. Begged and
pleaded. But they didn’t listen to my ten-year-old self. They’d left the island.
They’d left me, returning three weeks later in two identical mahogany
coffins.
Refusing to think about that time, I push all thoughts of my parents and
their tragic deaths out of my head. When my feet hit the hardwood floor of
our hallway, Grandma Silva steps out of the kitchen at the end of the hall, her
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