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Overview
Deep in the hills of Lithia brews an epic battle between evil and nature...
Nineteen-year-old Kat Jones has been a competitive runner since she was a young girl, but after her mother's death, the path her life was supposed to take begins to crumble around her -- until one day, she finds herself on the run in a literal sense, this time in a race for her very life. Kat's journey takes her to the Pacific Northwest town of Lithia, the place of her last good memories, of the days when her mother was still alive. But soon after her arrival, strange things begin to happen in Lithia -- and when one of her new friends disappears under mysterious circumstances, Kat begins to realize that Lithia's inhabitants are not all of this world. Worst of all, she is falling in love with one of these otherworldly locals, and the friend who hopes to save her has secrets of his own.
As Kat tries to rebuild her life, she is also training for a race that will turn out to be her biggest challenge yet, as she must outrun not only the demons of her past but the demons of the here and now, who threaten her very existence and that of the entire town.
At once a paranormal love story and an environmental allegory, Out of Breath offers an exciting new voice in young adult fiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780979647574 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Ashland Creek Press |
| Publication date: | 10/11/2011 |
| Series: | Lithia Trilogy , #1 |
| Pages: | 274 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.62(d) |
| Age Range: | 13 - 17 Years |
Read an Excerpt
Out of Breath
A novel
By Blair Richmond
Ashland Creek Press
Copyright © 2011Ashland Creek PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9796475-7-4
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1They call it a runner's high, a sensation of euphoria experienced after a certain distance, usually a very long distance. Some runners must travel six miles or more before feeling it. But me, I feel that high every moment my worn old running shoes touch the ground.
Since I was eight years old I've been a runner. Not a jogger. A runner. I was always the fastest girl I knew and, during junior high, faster than any boy I knew. I ran cross-country at West Houston High, and I won state during my junior year. A scholarship to a major college seemed all but inevitable until my dad backed the car over my let foot the summer before my senior year. It's funny how quickly dreams can be crushed. Just as easily as my let foot.
The community college didn't have a running team, not that it mattered. I was too busy waiting tables and tending bar to have the time anyway. My foot eventually grew strong again, and I ran on my own when I found the time, usually late at night. Running was the only thing that kept me sane and out of trouble. I wish I had been running during that last night in Houston.
But because I wasn't, I guess that's why I'm running now. Though not in the conventional form. I've been on the run, moving from town to town, scrubbing floors at truck stop rest- rooms to pay for meals, sleeping in homeless shelters, keeping an eye open at all times. Never fully sleeping. Never relaxed.
Being on the run is different from running. For one thing, on the run, there's no such thing as a runner's high.
* * *
It is late in October when I arrive in Lithia. A woman in a huge white pickup truck with a white dog named Kitty on her lap gave me a ride north from Redding. She told me about the jerk who let her last month for a younger woman. She told me you can't pump your own gas in Oregon, not that I'll have to bother either way. She told me that people get lost in these parts; they pull over one day to check out the scenery and they never come back. She shoves ten dollars in my hand as I climb down from the cab.
"Be careful, kiddo," she says. "This town is full of crazies."
I watch her pull away and realize that I forgot to thank her. Her gift is the only money I have. Ten bucks won't buy me a motel room, so I begin looking for a place to sleep the night.
I try to remember Lithia, searching the recesses of a child's memory. The town is in southern Oregon, so small and so close to the state line that if you're driving south on the interstate, you can miss it entirely and not realize it until you're in California. A speck of a city clinging to the forested legs of a sprawling wilderness of trees. People call Lithia "quaint." They come from all around to see shows at its theaters. But I have a different reason for coming here.
I was only eight when I left Lithia, and maybe that's why I have no memories of the town, or maybe it is just too dark tonight. There is no moon above, or if there is, it's denied viewing by the low-hanging clouds. I can see the beginning of the hills behind the small town square. Houses rising up, growing more expansive as the hills stretch into the white mist.
But the town square is well lit and lively with couples and young people milling about. Families, their little kids leashed to their hands; some older couples, retired and practically living at the theater. People my age, dressed in fatigues or batiks, hair knotted and dreadlocked, beards down to their chests, rings through their ears down to their shoulders. Music drifts down from the second floor of an old brick building. I sit on a bench and let the music calm me.
People look at me as they pass. I don't look like anyone here. I'm not quite a hippie, not a young mom, not a college student. I'm not one of the runners who comes here for training in the mountains; I'm not a theater buff. I don't fit in, even though I'm probably one of the few people who was actually born here.
There's a pizza shop on the edge of the square, and I spend half my money on a slice and a large coffee. I don't normally eat pizza but right now I'm so hungry I could order an entire pie. Yet I resist. I have to make the money last. Hunger is a fact of life now, and there's nothing to do but ignore it.
Same with the cold. When I let Houston, I didn't have time to pack much. Working my way through community college, I didn't own much anyway. And back then, there was no need for a jacket, not in the heat of the summer.
I headed for Austin, where I lied my way into a bartending job, adding two years to my life and saying I was twenty-one. Drunk men staring at me in my requisite low-cut tank top and jean shorts was a small price to pay for tips. It was the tips that had kept me in school back in Houston, and I got over the indignity of flaunting what I had for strangers a long time ago. Not that I have much to flaunt, with a runner's build, but I do have good legs.
Austin was a paradise. The bar owner was a salty woman who had inherited the bar from her ex-husband after he died—"He forgot to change the will, bless his dumb old heart," she said—and every night after closing she walked me back to my motel room, waiting till I was locked in safe before going home herself. I risked working there for a few weeks to save up money, but in the end it was still too close to Houston, so I moved on. I found a homeless shelter in Lubbock. Then one morning, after I woke up on my cot with a smelly man rolling back and forth on top of me, I let the state of Texas for good.
I headed north and then drifted west. As summer slipped into fall, I picked up a sweatshirt in Colorado Springs, a hoodie in Reno.
I didn't realize it at first, but from the very beginning, I was headed home. To Lithia.
So here I am, and though I'm wearing every piece of clothing I have right now, still I'm frozen through. I move to a spot that's close to a flamethrower—a woman with a baton burning at both ends. She's wearing a long, gauzy skirt, and I worry about it catching ire until I see a ire extinguisher next to her tip jar. I look at it with longing, all those bills and coins, but there's a guy sitting really close, and I'm not sure I could steal from her anyway.
The flames don't offer enough heat to keep me warm, so I stand and start walking again. I enter a park just off the town square and walk past a duck pond. I hear a creek running. A couple, hand in hand, pass me, and then I'm alone in the darkness, invisible. But I welcome it. I'm tired of the eyes that seem to judge me, take pity on me. Or worse. This is why I used to run at night, in spite of the warnings against it. Nobody could catch me anyway, I always believed. And I was right—nobody ever did.
I find a bench and consider making this my bed for the night. There's a public bathroom just beyond. Maybe I can withstand the cold. Maybe. Then I notice the sign on the bathroom building.
WARNING Recent bear attacks Proceed with caution Avoid park after dark
My stomach clenches, triggered by a childhood memory I'm not expecting yet always dreading. I quickly turn around and escape the darkness of the park.
I return to the pizza shop and spend the rest of my money on pizza so that I can sit in the warmth, with all the good smells of pizza bread and the familiar smell of spilled beer. I take a table next to the window so I can watch people pass.
I'll have to leave eventually—then what? Even if I find a homeless shelter, I don't want to spend the night there. I'm tired of shelters and their rules and the men who inevitably sneak into the women's dorms. I don't like bunk beds, and I get claustrophobic when I'm lying in a room full of cots, listening to ever
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Out of Breath by Blair Richmond. Copyright © 2011 by Ashland Creek Press. Excerpted by permission of Ashland Creek Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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