Stung by Bethany Wiggins EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Bethany Wiggins
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Siblings
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I don’t remember going to sleep. All I remember is waking up here—a
place as familiar as my own face.
At least, it should be.
But there’s a problem. The once-green carpet is gray. The classicalmusic posters lining the walls are bleached, their brittle corners curling
where the tacks are missing. My first-place ribbons are pale blue instead of
royal. My sundresses are drained of color. And my bed. I sit on the edge of
a bare, sun-bleached mattress, a mattress covered with dirt and twigs and
mouse droppings.
I turn my head and the room swims, faded posters wavering and swirling
against grimy walls. My head fills with fuzz, and I try to remember when
my room got so filthy, since I vacuum and dust it once a week. And why is
the mattress bare, when I change the sheets every Saturday? And where did
my pillows go?
My stomach growls, and I push on the concave space beneath my ribs,
against the shirt sweat-plastered to my skin, and try to remember the last
time I ate.
Easing off the bed, I stand on rubbery legs. The carpet crunches beneath
my feet, and I look down. I am wearing shoes. I have been sleeping in shoes
—old-lady white nurse shoes. Shoes that I have never seen before. That I
have no memory of pulling onto my feet and tying. And I am standing in a
sea of broken glass. It glitters against the filthy, faded carpet, and I can’t
remember what broke.
A breeze stirs the stifling air, cooling my sweaty face, and the gauzy
curtains that hide my bedroom window lift like tattered ghosts. Jagged
remnants of glass cling to the window frame, and a certainty creeps into my
brain, seeps into my bones. Something is wrong—really wrong. I need to
find my mom. On legs barely able to hold my weight, I stumble across the
room and to the doorway.
Sunlight streams through the bedroom windows on the west side of the
house, lighting the dust in the hallway. I peer into my brother’s room and
gasp. His dinosaur models are broken to bits and strewn across the faded
carpet, along with the Star Wars action figures he’s collected since he was
four years old. I leave his doorway and walk to the next door, to my older
sister’s room. College textbooks are on the floor, their pages torn and
scattered over the filthy carpet. The bed is gone and the mirror above the
bureau is shattered.
Dazed, I walk through sunlight and dust, down the hall, trailing my
fingers along the paint-peeling wall to Mom’s room.
Her room is just like the other rooms. Faded. Filthy. Broken windows.
Bare mattress. And a word I don’t want to think about but force myself to
admit.
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