Читать книгу The Cork Chronicles - Paige Hartwick - Страница 6

One good thing about Cork, Oregon was that she could drive anywhere in less than ten minutes and that was with traffic. So it didn’t take her very long to get to the library. When she got there, she realized that they closed in less than an hour because of budget cutbacks.

Kyra hurried to look up all of the hotels’ phone numbers. It took until the fourth call to find an available room. It was at a low star motel, but it was all she could afford. The phone calls took way longer than she thought they would, so she wouldn’t be able to study at the library. Thankfully she still had enough time to go inside and borrow the books she needed. While inside, she even asked for a job application because she had always wanted to be a librarian when she was a child. She constantly had her nose in a book, so why not?

Even though Cork only had about twenty thousand people, their library was huge! Kyra spent most of her spare time there when she wasn’t at work or taking care of her siblings while their parents were at work.

Kyra got back in her car and drove the half mile to the motel and got checked in. Thankfully she was able to get an upstairs room so she wouldn’t have to listen to people above her head all night while she was trying to study.

Once Kyra unloaded her bags and put them in her room, she went to the store for some snacks and drinks. It was getting really chilly outside so she was glad that she didn’t have to sleep in her car tonight. It wasn’t cold enough for her to get hypothermia, but it was cold enough to keep her up all night.

While Kyra was at the store, she couldn’t think of what kind of food to eat. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her money on just food. Since her motel room had a mini-fridge, Kyra was able to buy some yogurt. Her go-to snacks for studying were yogurt, chocolate covered pretzels, and carrot sticks. Even though she didn’t care for any of those things, she knew she needed brain food, especially now more than ever.

Kyra had a system for studying that had seemed to work very well for her all throughout school. She would study for about an hour, then take a ten minute break and listen to music. That way, whatever she was studying would be associated with a song.

While Kyra was reaching into the cooler for her yogurt, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She felt like someone was watching her. Turning around quickly revealed no one around her. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but this had been happening way too often lately. Every time she went to see her therapist, she would get that same feeling as she would walk from her car to the building.

Kyra’s gut was telling her to run away, to run as fast as she could. Maybe her anxiety and adrenaline were still out of whack from her fight with her mom. Once again, she shook off the feeling and went to pay for her things. Thankfully she had been able to park right in front of the store and she was able to throw her things in and take off.

Kyra drove back to the motel and locked herself in her room. She immediately turned on some music and put her food away. After a few minutes she was able to relax and got her books out to study.

It was about two in the morning and Kyra was so exhausted that she fell asleep on her notes. She had been studying for the past six hours, which was three times longer than she had ever been able to stay focused before.

Sometime around eleven she had moved from the desk to the bed to study, so she was very surprised she was able to stay awake for so long. Kyra had only gotten about four hours of sleep per night since the “incident” because she kept having nightmares, but she forgot what they were about the second her eyes would open. Three weeks had gone by but she still had absolutely no memory of what had happened. She did find out that Ashlyn was only going to be getting thirty days in jail, unless her memories miraculously came back within the next week.

If her memories were to come back, then there would be a trial and Ashlyn could be looking at the next five years in prison. Even though she couldn’t remember the incident, she could still remember all of the previous altercations with Ashlyn. In her opinion, Ashlyn deserved WAY more than thirty days or five years.

Before the incident, Kyra had secretly been planning to move back to Ireland and live with her grandmother. It wasn’t for sure yet, but she had been weighing the pros and cons of moving for quite some time now, almost since the day she graduated from high school. The only things keeping her in the States were money and her anxiety. Just the thought of moving halfway around the world and leaving her family behind to live with a grandmother she barely knew, terrified her to no end. Her mom’s mom was really sweet and down to earth, but Kyra didn’t know of anything that they had in common. Plus, how would she even be able to get a job once she had moved?! Her parents hadn’t taught her or her siblings very much of the Irish language, so that’s just one more thing to worry about. Thankfully English is widely spoken, or she’d be totally screwed.