The Light of the World (The Light Series Book 1)

  The Light of the World

  The Light Trilogy

  A Novel by Tara Brown

  Copyright 2012 Tara Brown

  http://TaraBrown22.blogspot.com

  Amazon Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. No alteration of content is permitted. This book is a work of fiction; any similarities are coincidental. This book contains materials not suited for people under the age of eighteen. All characters in this fictional story are based entirely on the crazed mind of the author and are not based on any human. Any similarities are by chance and not intentional. Copyright for cover art held by Phatpuppy Designs.

  Cover Art by Phatpuppy

  Edited by Andrea Burns

  This book is dedicated to the readers, without you there is nothing but my madness.

  Other Books by Tara Brown writing as

  TL Brown, AE Watson, Erin Leigh, and Sophie Starr

  The Devil’s Roses

  Cursed

  Bane

  Hyde

  Witch

  Death

  Blackwater

  Midnight Coven

  Redeemers

  The Born Trilogy

  Born

  Born to Fight

  Reborn

  The Light Series

  The Light of the World

  The Four Horsemen

  The End of Day-coming soon

  Imaginations

  Imaginations

  Duplicities

  The Blood Trail Chronicles

  Vengeance

  Vanquished-coming soon

  The Single Lady Spy Series

  The End of Me

  The End of Games

  The End of You – a Novella

  The End of Tomorrow-coming soon

  Blood and Bone

  Blood and Bone-coming soon from Montlake Romance

  Sin and Swoon-coming soon from Montlake Romance

  My Side

  The Long Way Home

  The Lonely

  LOST BOY

  First Kiss

  Sunder

  In The Fading Light

  For Love or Money

  White Girl Problems

  The Seventh Day

  The Club

  Sinderella

  Chapter One

  Dreams speak to you about the things in your day that your brain feels are unfinished. I know this because my mom is a dream analyst.

  If I ask her about my dreams, she always tells me something crazy, like the bear in my dream tells me that the female side of my body lacks something in some way.

  It's not about sex or wearing perfume though. It's always something mysterious and intangible, like I avoid being a woman and need to make womanly decisions because I still act like a girl. A bear wants me to know this? And apparently in dreams, bears are girls which would explain why they are also incredibly judgmental.

  If I could “le sigh” and move past it, I would. But I can't. She is relentless.

  Instead of acknowledging she is crazy, we make a dream board which essentially is pages cut from a magazine and glued to a poster board. This tells her my fortune. She is a picture reader too.

  When I was eight, she was a palm reader. Several times she has toured with groups of psychic spiritualists. I don’t believe in a lot of things, but I swear the things I saw with those women have still not started to make sense. They're always with us, her spiritual friends.

  She isn’t a bad mom, and she isn’t a flake or a fake. I just am not entirely sure I believe the things she might be. The things people who want to see and need to see, see.

  Which is why, instead of backpacking across Europe for the year like she suggested, I chose college. The battle over college was brutal. To the point of me nearly running away . . . to school. What kid runs away from home to go to college? Deep down I wonder if there are other kids out there like me, kids of the flower children and hippies. Kids running away to school. Overprotective isn’t the right word for her. Security detail might be a better way of saying it.

  Like I said, she isn’t a bad mom. She just isn't much like a mom. She's more of a spiritual guide. She felt I spiritually needed Europe and to be with her. I think she just wanted to meet up with me in Italy or Norway. She has friends everywhere. Followers. Like Gandhi. With my luck and her attitude, I think she might have actually come for the entire trip. Fun.

  I climb the stairs with my box of belongings in my arms and try to ignore her rambling on behind me.

  “Nene, this place has no sauna, no steam room, and no pool. There isn’t a yoga studio for twelve blocks. How are you going to get there six days a week if it's that far? I think you should rethink school and start next year.”

  I glance back at her and run into something with my armload. “Stop. Just stop. This isn’t the place for this argument. Please. They have a vegan menu and reusable water bottle filling stations. It's just like home. We talked about this. You can't keep controlling my choices. Remember the bear told me to make womanly choices?”

  She shakes her head. “The energy in here is bad, kiddo. Really stuffy. I have some white sage in the car. I'll be right back.”

  She turns and runs back down the wide stairwell. I try to shove forward, but the box is still stuck. I heave again and try to peer over the edge of the massive box. Fortunately, it's light.

  A muffled voice speaks as I push forward once more, “Please, for the love of God, stop shoving that into my back.”

  I lower the box and lose my grip. It tumbles from my hands and takes a blonde girl to the ground. Her hands are full too. I drop the box and put a hand out. She looks annoyed.

  “I'm so sorry,” I mutter.

  She takes my hand and raises an eyebrow at me. She stands and gives me the up-down. Dropping my hand, she sneers. I haven’t seen a sneer in forever. Hers is a decent effort. She disapproves of me for whatever reason. She bends and picks up the things she dropped. She scowls and moves to the side of the hall.

  I grab the box and squeeze past her. “Sorry.”

  She blows her blonde bangs out of her perfect oval face and glares at me with dark-blue eyes. Great, a mean girl. Nothing like pissing the mean girls off on the first day. I've seen this movie and am fairly certain I will be hazed savagely.

  “Nene, come hold my hand. It's stronger if we both do it.” I hear my mom calling me from the bottom of the stairs. I cringe and wonder how bad the hazing is going to get when my new dorm-mates see her? I suspect she's filling the halls with white-sage smoke and waving her hands around in circles. I suspect this because I've seen her do it a millions times. I'm not even exaggerating. Well, maybe by a couple thousand.

  I walk-run down the hall, struggling with the gigantic box. The numbers fly past me. Finally, I arrive at my room. I drop the box and slide the key in and trip over the box trying to slide it. I fall into the room. A girl with dark hair and a somber look scowls at me from the bed on the left side of the room. She is prim and proper, and I suspect she already hates me—she and the blonde mean girl. Great first day.

  I hear people in the hallway with my mom. I don’t dare poke my head out and look. She either has them all waving their hands and smudging the air (like in a musical), or she is being laughed at. If it's the latt
er, she will shake her head and tell them how she just saved them from wicked karma and bad juju. She doesn’t care when people laugh at her. I wish I had inherited that from her. Instead, my face is flaming red and my stomach is aching.

  I lean into the box and sigh. “Damn.”

  The moody-looking brunette gives me another look and then pulls her headphones over her ears better. She doodles like all angst-ridden people of my generation. Only the truly misunderstood know how to be sullen and doodle, like Bella Swan. In reality, she looks a lot like Blair from Gossip Girl. She is evidently my new roommate.

  I blow my hair out of my face and push the box into the room, sliding it along the hardwood floor.

  The room smells. It's not the Gossip Girl look alike that stinks. It's an older smell. Something that only happens after floors and walls are lived in for hundreds of years. Beer has been spilled and food has been heated in microwaves, and all of it has left a scent in the walls and floors. Like decay.

  “Nene, come on out into the hall. I have a few of the others doing a meditation to clear the air and change the vibrations of the building. We need to create a harmonious space for you all.”

  I look back at her standing in my doorway. I cringe when I notice how unbuttoned her shirt has become with all the smudging she has been doing. She has mad cleavage everywhere. It's appalling that there are stores called Forever 21 for cougars like her to shop at, but to wear it around twenty-one-year-olds is horrid. I know she didn’t mean to wear a tiny button-top t-shirt from that store to my new college. She doesn’t ever mean to be sexy. It just doesn’t change the fact that she is sexy.

  Had I not been near vomiting with nerves when I left our house, I might have noticed our t-shirts matched. God hates me, I am convinced.

  We match.

  My t-shirt is light blue and hers is lilac. Her jeans are nicer than mine though. So she actually looks better than I do. She is fit for forty, but she is forty. It's not fair.

  Blair Waldorf's stuntwoman loses her glare as Willow leaves the room. Yes, I call my mother Willow.

  Gossip Girl raises an eyebrow. “Is that your mom?”

  I want to say no. My lips form the word but my head nods, dejectedly.

  She takes her headphones off and raises both eyebrows. “Damn, dude. I thought I had it bad. My mom's a gyno.”

  I grimace and like her immediately.

  I kick the door closed and stand up.

  “She looks like she could go here.”

  “Yeah.” I sit on my bare bed and wonder what kind of perversions have occurred on it before I got here. “She's a vegan. They don’t age fairly. All the healthy eating and water and steam baths have pretty much stopped her from aging. In fact, she could be getting younger looking instead of older.” My voice is exhausted and hollow.

  “She could be your sister. Is she for real leading mediation out there?”

  I shake my head and lick my lips. “No clue. Most likely.”

  She puts her headphones down and looks out the window. I can tell she wants to go see. Everyone wants to see what Willow is doing. She has a way about her. You can't help but like her, love her even. People follow her, stare at her beauty, and enjoy the feeling of her energy. They can't fight it.

  “I'm Rayne.”

  She laughs and nods. “Of course you are.”

  I glare.

  She puts her hands up defensively. “Sorry, it's just your name is Rayne and your mom is leading group meditation. Is she wearing your clothes?”

  I laugh with her. “Yeah, we share clothes. This is nothing though. Wait till Halloween. She'll come here and try to party with us. She has no concept of age. She loves clubs.”

  She laughs and I laugh and we never mention the “us” I threw in there. I'll admit it was premature, but I like her. Even if she is trying to look like Blair Waldorf. She even has the headband and the lip gloss.

  “I'm Mona.” She stands up and opens the door a crack. She peeks and shakes her head. “Amazing.”

  “They’re sitting cross-legged, aren’t they?”

  She nods and closes it. “Wanna go get a drink so no one knows that fiasco belongs to this room?” I don’t have hurt feelings. As far as parents go, Willow is more than a fiasco. She is crazed when it comes to being away from me or me leaving the house or me having friends she doesn’t approve of. But then in the same breath, she is mellow and calm and totally a hippie. Her garden is insane. She actually grows weed, but we aren’t allowed to smoke it. It's for medicines.

  I stand and pull my phone out. I text Willow and let her know I forgot some crap at the house and went to go buy replacements. I'll stop and buy something on the way back—if she's still here. I'm scared she's going to move in.

  Mona sneaks out the door and I follow. She creeps to the left, not the way I came in with the box. Apparently, a fire exit is three doors away from our room. We run down the stairs like we have escaped from prison. When we leave the hall and the fresh air hits me, I feel it.

  The freedom. Finally. It's blowing in the air and dusting the control off of me.

  I always imagined it would feel amazing and it does. More than amazing. It might be my first spiritual moment—ever.

  Well, except when Willow's friends make me channel, but I pretend that never happened. I pretend I can't hear them. I don’t talk to the dead anymore. Willow doesn’t ask and I don’t tell. Even when I don’t mean to hear them, and they tell me something crazy, and then it happens. Sometimes they make the air sparkle, but I ignore that too. Willow's weird spiritual blood flows in my veins. As far as possible outcomes are concerned, I will take hearing the dead every now and then. It could be so much worse. I could read palms or pictures or hear live people's thoughts.

  Mona is funny and sarcastic. She tells me about her parents’ divorce as we cross the greens to College Street. Her stepdad sounds like a real treat. I'm glad I don’t have stepparents. I don’t even have a dad. Willow says he is a man she would rather not discuss.

  The pub we go to is hopping. Back to school means chaos and constant noise. I don’t mind it, but I can't focus on one thing. My eyes dart constantly. I've never been exposed to this much chaos in my life.

  She natters on, “So anyway, me and my dad moved here a year ago. He gets a good rate for me at the school, and I pretend I don’t see him. I'm not in any of his classes. I'm for sure not that smart. Not in languages.”

  I watch her sip her float. She's so pretty.

  “You meet any billionaires in this town yet? Maybe one named Chuck?” I smile.

  She frowns and then laughs. “For the record, I looked like this before that show came out.”

  I point. “No beaver teeth or gap though.”

  She laughs again. “Yeah, I got braces.”

  I notice the guys at the pool table smiling our way. “So, you single?”

  Her eyes dart at me. She blushes and winks at me. “I am, but I'm not into that. I'm all about boys.”

  I look back at her sharply. “No-my-God. No. I mean, I get it—yoga teacher-democrat-vegan mom and my name is Rayne. Yes, I could be a classic case, but I'm not a lesbian either. My bestie back home is a lesbian though, her name is Trudy. Her parents are both republicans and teachers, so you never know. And actually, she just moved to Canada and got married.” I'm talking too much.

  She gives me a look. “That's weird. Anyway, yeah I'm really into angst-ridden boys with poetry and dark hair and internal conflict. Delish. Have you read any of the Bronte Sisters’ books? Love the Gothic romance heroes like Heathcliff.”

  I shake my head. “Yeah, not really my kind of books. I'm more a Harry Potter kind of girl or vampire shows. Anyway, the reason I was asking if you were single was because the guys at the pool table are eyeballing you.”

  She tilts her head. “Yeah, pretty sure it's you. They can't see me.”

  I roll my eyes. “Dude, you look like a movie star. I look like I'm one AWOLNATION song away from cutting myself.”

  She snorts
and root beer froths from her glossy lips.

  I pass her a napkin and smile. “Sorry. I always crack a joke as someone puts something in his or her mouth. I'm thinking dentistry for my future.”

  She wipes her face. “For real?”

  I shake my head and sip my root beer. “No, that was another joke.”

  “That one wasn’t actually funny.” She glances back at the guys at the pool table and looks back. “Yikes. Seniors. We need to steer clear of them.”

  I look at them and frown. “How can you tell?”

  “Beer. Real beer. They don’t serve minors here.”

  My phone vibrates. I look down at Willow's message.

  Try to stay in the dorms as much as possible. Don’t sleep at other people's dorms, Rayne. Bed bugs are a real problem in places like this. I love you so much. No sex, no meat, and no boys. Promise. Stay in the dorms, okay? Kisses!!

  Relief fills me and wrestles with the guilt. I shouldn’t be so excited she is going home and will miss me from a distance.

  I glance over and smile at the dark-haired guy in the group trying to get our attention. His hair almost matches mine. Dark brown, almost black. Willow says I'll go gray before her, because of the dark hair. Her naturally strawberry-blonde hair doesn’t have a single gray, at forty.

  I probably already have them. Probably because of her.

  Pool-table senior smiles, and my stomach knots. I can't help but think about what Willow said, “No boys,” and roll my eyes a little bit.

  “Those seniors are trouble, for real. I heard last year about lipstick parties with the freshman girls and pass-around girls.”

  I frown. Apparently, I've been under a rock for a hundred years. “What's that?”

  She leans in and mutters, “If you date them, you have to do stuff for their friends. You know? They pass you around.” She presses her tongue into her cheek, and I fight my WTF face.

  “Oh my God. Seriously?”

  She looks severely serious. “I knew a girl, a freshman last year. Did everything her senior boyfriend asked and then he dumped her anyway. Gross.”