Read Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) for Free Online Page B

disturbing of all, Ryan and me hand in hand, as if I was some innocent, carefree girl, glimpses of funfairs and beaches and picnics.
    I pushed that thought down inside me. It didn’t matter why. However much I ached for him, he was better off without me.
    I grabbed my bag and ran.
     
    ***
     
    We were well into October, but the weather was holding. I’d had to add a shawl to my dress but, as long as I kept to the sunny side of the street, it was bearable.
    The sidewalk was more crowded than it normally was, which told me I was running even later than I’d thought. Great. Still, it was only method acting class with Mr. Gizacho (or Gazpacho, as we’d renamed him). The first half hour would just be him regaling us with stories of life in the theater—he wouldn’t even notice I was missing.
    I clattered down the stairs, half an inch and one sideways heel away from a sprained ankle. I slipped through the mass on the platform and was just in time to see the train pull away. I swore under my breath, drawing surprised glances from the suited commuters on either side of me. One of whom soothed his moral outrage by checking out my boobs.
    I realized I was staring across the tracks at the exact spot where I’d seen my brother, Nick, a few years before. I still wondered if I’d imagined it. I’d had a class cancelled, that day, so I’d been coming into Fenbrook an hour late, waiting at the station when I’d just looked across...and there he was. His jeans had been frayed and muddy at the ankles, and he’d been wearing an oversized shirt that looked like it once belonged to a long distance trucker. If it hadn’t been for the ancient Cubs t-shirt, I might not have recognized him at all.
    He’d looked up and seen me, and we’d stared at each other across the gap. And then my train arrived, and I told myself I had to get on it, and that was that.
    Except, as soon as I’d arrived in Fenbrook, I’d gone to the toilets and thrown up for about an hour straight, as if all of the memories were choosing that route out of my body. Seeing him again had made my entire escape from Chicago, the whole creation of Jasmine, seem like nothing more than a daydream. They’d found me. They’d found me!
    Eventually, when weeks went by without seeing him again, I calmed down to realize that it had been a simple coincidence. There was no sign of my dad, so it wasn’t that he’d tracked me down. More likely, Nick had done exactly what I’d done, fleeing the family and coming to New York on his own, with no idea that I’d picked the same city. It made sense: he’d always loved the idea of coming here, as well.
    So he was on his own. So I should do the right thing and find him. Family stick together, and all that.
    But this was my family. My twisted, fucked up, crime-ridden family. Yes, my dad was the root of the evil, but Nick had bent to his will more than once to stop the beatings. He was a year older than me, so he’d been first in line when my dad needed things doing. He’d started small, just a little dealing in the high school parking lot. But then he’d got into bigger, more serious deals, until he eventually wound up doing time. He was released and almost immediately got involved in the same old world, although this time the charges didn’t stick. It was only a matter of time, though, and by the time I fled I was pretty sure he was using as well as dealing.
    So I didn’t try to find him. I kept an eye out every morning on my way to Fenbrook, but I never even glimpsed him again. Maybe he’d only been visiting the city, and he was back in Chicago. Maybe he was dead. Or maybe he’d be right there, any week day morning, same time on the same commuter route, and all I had to do was skip class and show up an hour late.
    I’d been petrified. Of my dad, of my past being revealed, of the life I’d so carefully built up being snatched away from me. I’d been on the cusp, then: Jasmine had been starting to feel like my real life, with