Read DIFFERENT (Different Series Book 1) for Free Online Page B

make-up was flawless. She placed a plate with a pancake down in front of me before she sat down next to Terry, where a yoghurt and a cup of tea were already placed.
                  I thought back to what breakfast was like at the Kingstons’. My foster mum, Julie, was usually at work, so she’d leave a box of cereal out on the table. It was unusual to find any milk left in the fridge, and I didn’t like to linger for too long out of my bedroom when Julie and my foster dad Doug were at work in case Max appeared.
                  It wasn’t that Julie and Doug were bad people. They worked hard and everything, but it was like they were a puzzle with a missing piece.
    ***
    Monty’s was a quaint Tudor brick building that was situated in a tiny village an hour from Oakwood that overlooked acres of fields. Regardless of where it was located, Monty’s was packed, and there wasn’t so much as one free table.
                  We were seated in an alcove around a rectangular mahogany table as we waited for our food to arrive. I didn’t feel hungry; instead, I just felt anxious. I checked my phone to see if Leo had texted me but he hadn’t.
                  ‘Celeste, it’s family time.’ Terry directed his gaze to my phone.
                  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered before I placed it into my purple over-the-shoulder bag.
                  How could it be family time when their son wasn’t even here? How could it be family time when I was an outsider?
    ***
    I’d been four when it’d first happened. My foster brother had pushed me into the pond in the garden. I remember the cold water engulfing me as I desperately tried to grab onto the muddy grass to pull myself up.
                  I remembered being dragged out, my white dress weighed down with mud and water as I coughed out the muck that lay within the pond. My foster mum was down on her knees patting my back, a look of frantic worry on her face.
                  ‘I told you both never to go near the pond,’ she said before hugging me.
                  ‘I told her she was too close to it, but she didn’t listen,’ my foster brother said.
                  ‘He pushed me,’ I coughed out.
                  ‘No, I never!’
                  ‘Celeste, you can’t accuse people of such horrible, untrue things.’ My foster mum held onto my arms and looked me straight in the eye as she spoke.
                  ‘But he did it.’
                  ‘We won’t tolerate lies like that in this family,’ she scowled.
                  I turned to face my foster brother, who smirked back at me. An intense anger swarmed over me as I willed for him to be dragged off his feet into the pond. I longed for him to feel as frightened as I had.
                  My foster brother fell onto the ground and was pulled along the muddy grass by an invisible force. He screamed out as he tried grabbing out at the grass. My foster mum looked horrified as she ran over to him and tried pulling at his arms as he fell into the water.
                  His whole body went under the water, causing it to splash up and bubbles to form at the surface. She desperately put her hands under the water and tried to pull him up, but he wouldn’t budge. Then the water stopped splashing.
                  I remembered looking away from the pond, not wanting to watch what was happening. That was when my foster mum pulled the lifeless boy onto the ground and pressed her hands onto his chest. His skin had gone as white as paper, and his lips were blue.
                  Then he opened his eyes and started to cough out. My foster mum wrapped her arms around him and sobbed into his drenched clothes.
                  ‘You,’ she pointed at me. ‘You did this.’
                  I