SORROW WOODS Read Online Free

to Elodie and grab her hand.
    “We need to go.”

    “Don’t go,” he says. He’s moved from the light and he’s now so close that I can see his long,
    black lashes moving up and down when he blinks. “Let’s just talk some more.”

    “I don’t think we should be talking to you at all.”

    “Why not?”

    “Mother says we shouldn’t talk to strangers,” I tell him.

    “I’m not a stranger anymore, am I? You know my name and I know yours.”

    I shake my head.

    “We’ve never seen another person before,” admits Elodie. “We’re not supposed to talk to
    anyone else.”

    He bursts out laughing and looks down at Elodie who frowns at him. “Are you being
    serious?”

    She nods. “It’s just us and our Mamma.”

    “Always?”

    We nod.

    He sighs and sits down on a fallen tree trunk, looking confused. He also looks like he has
    thousands of questions and doesn’t know what to do with them. “How old are you?”

    “I’m sixteen,” I say, “and Elodie is six.”

    “When were you sixteen?”

    “A while ago. I’m nearly seventeen.”

    He shakes his head. “When are you seventeen? What day is your birthday?”

    “May the fifth.”

    “May?” he repeats. “The fifth of May.”

    “When is your birthday, Kaiden-the-bird-shooter?” Elodie asks, stepping out from behind
    me.

    He looks up at her and frowns. “Christmas Day.”

    Elodie seems to forget that he’s upset her and smiles at him. “That’s cool.”

    He shrugs. “I don’t get double the presents though.”

    “We don’t get presents at all,” she says.

    He looks up and blinks. “That’s too bad.”

    I shrug. We’ve never had presents at Christmas. Mamma always says that Father Christmas
    can’t find our little house out here and we don’t need presents anyway because we have the Earth.
    Both Elodie and I still would have liked to wake up on Christmas morning to a room full of presents like we’ve read about over the years. Elodie even has a picture pinned to her wall near her bed that she ripped from a picture book when she was three years old, showing what a room looks like on
    Christmas morning.

    “Haven’t you ever been anywhere else other than these woods?” he asks.

    “Sure,” I say, “we’ve been to the Lake after the rains, and we go up the mountains almost
    every single day.”

    He shakes his head. “I don’t mean that.”

    Oh. Why doesn’t he just say what he really means then?

    “I mean, haven’t you ever been to the city?”

    I shake my head. “We’ve never been in the truck. Mamma always goes to the city.”

    “What does she do in the city?”

    Elodie steps forward and sits on the ground opposite him, crossing her legs. I stay where I
    am. “She gets supplies.”

    “What sort of supplies?”

    “Water, food, and sometimes books, newspapers, and clothes.” I shrug. “Those sorts of
    things really.”

    He nods.

    I’m about to ask him more. I want to know where in the woods he lives but we hear another
    ear-splitting bang. Elodie jumps.

    “Home,” I order.

    Neither of us says anything more to the boy. We just turn and run home and this time we
    don’t stop, not even when Kaiden shouts for us to wait. We run until our legs and lungs feel like they’re gonna give up on us, and don’t stop until we get back to the house.

    About an hour later, I crawl up the steps and collapse onto the top of the veranda. I can’t decide what part of me is aching the most. My legs feel as if they’re disconnected from my hips and my
    lungs feel as if they exploded out of my chest a long time ago. I turn over and lie on my back until I feel like I can breathe properly again. Elodie joins me, but instead of panting like me, she starts to laugh.

    I frown at her. “What’s so funny?”

    “Today. It’s been fun.”

    Fun? I don’t for one second think Mamma will agree when we tell her we were talking to a
    stranger in our woods that had a gun. Mamma will be furious.

    She sits up