Awake at Dawn (Shadow Falls #2)(29)

They walked without talking. A bird chirped above, the wind rustled the leaves. Kylie assumed she was going the right direction because Della never spoke up and she'd told Kylie earlier that she could find the falls just by listening to it.

As they moved, trampling over and sometimes through the thick brush, Kylie noticed her pace matched that of Della's. It was Miranda who seemed to be struggling to keep up.

They made about a hundred feet, and Kylie noticed Della eyeing her under her lashes. Had she noticed Kylie's newfound energy as well? "What is it?" Kylie asked.

"Nothing," Della said. "It's just ... your heart's still racing really fast and you look ... different."

"Different?" Kylie asked, and looked from Della to Miranda and back. "How do I look different?"

Della continued walking but held her hands out in front of her boobs. "The girls."

Kylie looked down at her chest. "You've seen me without my bra before."

Della stopped. "It's not that your girls aren't supported. It's that they're bigger."

"They are not." Kylie stopped walking and protectively cupped her full size Bs in her palms. And the craziest thing happened. They didn't feel right. They felt ... "Oh, damn." They felt bigger.

"She's right." Miranda cupped her own boobs as if checking them. "Oh, God," muttered Kylie, staring down at herself.

"Hey, if you don't want them, pass me a cup or two over here." Della laughed.

Kylie recalled thinking that everything was changing. She just hadn't expected that to mean her boobs.

"That's not all," Miranda added. "You're taller, too. You must have had a growth spurt overnight."

"A growth spurt?" Kylie stood straight and visually measured herself against both Della and Miranda. She did appear to be a bit taller. Right then, her shoes felt tight, too. What was happening to her?

"My aunt Faye used to tell me every other week, 'You've just grown like a weed. Must have had a growth spurt.'"

Kylie wanted to believe that this was just a normal-human normal- growth spurt, but she didn't believe it. Her gaze shot to Della. "Did you ... did you, like, get bigger right before you turned?"

Della looked down at her chest. "Do I look like I got bigger? I wish."

Kylie looked back down at her boobs. "What if it doesn't stop? What if I just keep getting bigger?"

"Then you'll have boys lining up for miles." Miranda snickered. "Hey, you know how they feel about boobs. The more, the merrier."

"You could always change your name to Barbie," Della said, grinning. "My mom wouldn't even let us play with Barbie because she said it was an unhealthy body image. I think it was because she knew that with us being part Asian, we would probably suffer from the no butt, no boobs syndrome.

And she didn't want us to get our body image from a stacked piece of plastic."

"You've got a butt," Miranda said.

"Yeah, thank God. I at least got that from my mom. She's not short on bootie." She looked down at her chest. "Unfortunately, I took my dad's boobs."

Kylie tried to appreciate their lighthearted reactions to her situation, but it didn't dampen her concern. Okay, she'd admit that she'd occasionally wished she had a wee bit more up top. Especially when she compared herself to Sara, her best friend back home who no longer called, whose boobs were an eye magnet for guys. And sure, another few inches of height meant Kylie would look thinner.

None of that made her feel better. The idea that all this stemmed from some unknown, inhuman DNA she had coursing through her body made her nervous. Nervous because she didn't know how far it would go, or what would come next.

Would she end up having to have her size F bras custom-made like Sara's great-aunt did? Dear God, the woman nearly smothered Kylie when she hugged her at Sara's family's picnic.

Kylie still had her boobs in her hand when the chill ran down her back and up her arms, and her lips felt frosted from breathing in the icy air. Company had arrived.

Standing right in front of her was the ghost. Only she looked even worse than before. She was emaciated, too thin. Even her cheekbones protruded from the sides of her face, giving her the appearance of a skeleton.

"You have to do something. Soon. You have to do something. They killed me. Killed me and they will kill her, too." Then the ghost folded over and barfed all over Kylie's too-tight tennis shoes and Della's pretty white running shoes.

"Gross." Kylie jumped back and slammed into Miranda. "Gross what?" Della said, and looked down, and then Miranda moved in to see what was happening.

Kylie couldn't answer. She knew they wouldn't see the barf, she knew it wasn't really there, that as soon as the ghost left so would the vision, but Kylie was a bit of a sympathy puker, and real or not, right now it looked pretty damn real. Her gag reflex started to jump up and down in her throat. She looked away from her shoes.

"Do something," the ghost repeated.

"Oh, shit," blurted out Della. "They're here, aren't they?" Della started turning in circles, talking to things that weren't there. "I swear, I swear I'm sorry for everything I've ever done."

"Me, too," Miranda said, her eyes shifting from left to right. Kylie stared at the ghost and, not wanting to freak out Della or Miranda any more than they were, she spoke to the spirit in her mind. I'm trying to do something. But you have to tell me who it is. I need more information.