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Chapter 51: Summer (Boot) Camp

Author: Phenomenal Pen
last update Last Updated: 2024-10-29 19:42:56
Kate jackknifes into a sitting position. She’s soaked in sweat. Her eyes try to penetrate the dark to find something familiar – perhaps her favorite fleece blanket, the LOVE BTS night lamp that her Pa gave her on her 15th birthday, or even the hump of her ma who occasionally sleeps next to her: stout, huggable and reassuring.

A pang of homesickness grips her heart for her ma’s scent of body soap, rose and freshly pressed laundry; the same scent that has been protecting her for seventeen years like her very own ozone layer against all the bad things in the world, including thunder, White Ladies and bad dreams.

But tonight, there isn’t to be any such comfort for Kate because she’s in an alien room on a nondescript bed. Pale moonlight is spilling in and, for a moment of disorientation and alarm, the shadow of the soursop tree scratching the window appears to be waving at her from inside the room. The whole place looks as foreign as moonscape.

Kate shivers, hugs her legs, and presses he
Phenomenal Pen

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