Entangled: A Novel of Romantic Fantasy (Wanderlust Academy Book 1)

by Lori Wilde

  Entangled

  Wanderlust Academy Book One

  Michele Barrow-Belisle &

  Lori Wilde

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  About the Authors

  “Humans are the only creatures on earth whose emotions are irrevocably entangled with their memories.”

  Chapter One

  “A puppetry camp? That’s your idea? I tell you I need a summer job to pay for Granddad’s hospital bills, and you bring puppets to the table. Really?”

  I folded my arms and stared back at Kenzie’s doe-eyed innocent smile. It was one I knew well, since I’d been on the receiving end of it since junior high. Before my life had blown to hell and back.

  Picking up the pieces was hard, but she’d always been there to help. Who knew putting them back together would be virtually impossible?

  Kenzie rolled her eyes and dropped down on my thrift store sofa, releasing a gray cloud of dust. “No one said anything about puppetry camp. Did you even look at the pay? Tell me you checked that out at least.”

  I glanced down at the brochure’s rainbow-hued page, looking for something—anything—that didn’t awaken my childhood fear of clowns. “Yeah. All I see are puppets.”

  She snatched it from my hands. “See right there, do you see all those zeroes? It’s a very elite, very private summer arts school, Nora. One that multi-millionaire celebrities send their little brats to, so they can fly off on their private jets to celebrity rehab.”

  Hard to believe she was a drama major and desperately wanted to be one of those celebrities.

  “Uh-huh. And what would I be doing to earn all of those zeroes? So help me, if the next words out of your mouth sound even remotely like wear a red nose, this conversation is over.”

  She leaned back and crossed her tattooed legs at the ankles. “You don’t dress up. The puppets do.”

  “The puppets do.” I nodded. “Do you have any idea how crazy you sound right now?”

  “You should be flattered; when I gave them your name, they seemed pretty interested in meeting you.” She flipped her cornrowed hair back over her shoulder impatiently.

  I gnawed my thumbnail. “I dunno…”

  “Just go to the interview. I went out on a limb here for you. They only hire people with theater experience or who major in the arts. Getting you in on just a sculpting major on a deferred Barnes admission took some creative spinning.”

  Future, because I had to pass up my first year of college to look after Granddad.

  Once he was hospitalized, there was no time for school, not when I had to get a job to pay his medical bills. None of that would buy me a break with Kenzie.

  Guilt trips.

  They were what she did best, and I felt one coming.

  “I’m allergic to nature, Kenzie. Literally allergic,” I said. “And I don’t even like kids. Neither do you for that matter. Remember that year you volunteered to babysit the neighbor’s twins? You took them to the mall and ditched them the second a hot guy walked by.”

  Her dark brows furrowed. “Hey, I left them in a toy store, and I came back for them.”

  “Yeah. Four hours later. The security guard wasn’t impressed.”

  “No, but he was hot too.” She smirked. “Anyway, that was then, this is now. You owe me at least a drive by. Feel it out. It could solve a lot of your problems.”

  The scratching sound caught her attention, and she made a face and tucked her feet up under her. “Including the fact that the rats beat you to the pantry every morning for breakfast.”

  I glanced toward the cracked wall beside the pantry. The droppings I had to clean up every day were definitely more mouse than rat, but she was exaggerating for effect.

  It wasn’t a palace, but it was all I could afford living in the city, with the medical bills I had to cover. Granddad was my only living relative since Grandma had passed.

  No way was I not going to do everything I could for him. If it meant slumming the few years it takes to get through college, then so be it. They’d sacrificed everything for me. The least I could do was return the favor.

  “Fine. I’ll go to the interview. But...”

  “You’ll go, and it’ll be great. I promise. They have cool art classes, music, drama. Even telekinesis and telemetry, whatever the hell those are.”

  “Telekinesis. Seriously. Is that even a thing? What else do they teach? The art of hypnosis? Dream analysis 101?”

  “Who knows. Point is it’s weird...you like weird.”

  I sighed. Way to state the obvious. “I like you, don’t I?”

  She laughed and then flipped me the finger. “We’ve got an hour. And it’s a two hour drive so...”

  I sighed.

  She tapped on her watch. “You’re gonna freak when you see how many beautiful boys work at these things.”

  My eyes narrowed. “I thought we were going for the money.”

  Money was something I had use for. Desperately.

  Beautiful boys, not so much. In fact, the last thing I needed after my botched entanglement last year was another one of Kenzie’s attempts to get me hooked up with another hot guy.

  No thanks. Not when I dreamed about the guy of my dreams nearly every night, a guy no one in real life ever came close to surpassing.

  She hopped off the couch and headed for the fridge. It took a few hard tugs to get the door open, and it squealed in protest as the rusty hinges gave way.

  Her shrewd blue gaze scanned the bare shelves before she slammed it shut. “Money, sex... Why are you so opposed to having loads of both? And I know one-nighters aren’t your jam, and that’s fine. But seriously, most twenty-one-year-olds get the keys to the city, and you’re still holding the keys to your chastity belt.”

  “I have priorities.”

  She gestured to the rusted, empty fridge. “What do you live on? No wonder you’re bone-thin.”

  Another exaggeration considering my hourglass shape. Sure, living lean did wonders for a flat stomach, but I’d take a decent meal over washboard abs any day. Plus, I had a sugar habit to keep me fed, and none of that needed refrigerating.

  I followed her into the kitchen, which was more of a kitchenette really. “How about we leave my sex life out of this.”

  “Come on, Nora. It’s not like it’s normal to be romantically involved with a guy who literally lives in your dreams.”

  I poked around in a cupboard and found two cans of warm cola. Tossing one to her, I popped open the other. “I’m not romantically involved with him. He’s not real.”

  He wasn’t real. I repeated that to myself. And the dream never had a happy ending.
It always ended with him dying in my arms, leaving me with an ache in my heart that felt pretty damn real.

  “Okay, but you’ve dreamed about him almost every single night. For years. No wonder no other guy has gotten anywhere close to you. All your nights are spoken for. You’ve fantasized your very own Mr. Darcy, British accent and all, and no real guy can touch that fantasy. It’s not normal; that’s all I’m sayin’.”

  “I hope it’s all you’re sayin’, because I really don’t want to hear any more of your analysis. I have a recurring dream. End of story.” I took a swig of cola and swallowed. Warm soda was gross, but I couldn’t bring myself to waste it, not when the free-with-purchase refills at the variety store were all I could afford.

  “Now, if you really want me to go to this thing, you’ll give me ten minutes of peace so I can get changed, Freud.” I marched into the bedroom and shoved open the sliding closet door. The left corner came off the rails. Again. And I ignored it. Again.

  Kenzie leaned against the bedroom doorjamb. “Don’t go changing to try and please me babe.”

  “You’re hilarious,” I shouted, digging though my closet for my only interview-worthy skirt and blouse.

  “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  An engine backfired, setting off a string of car alarms. Life in the big city.

  “On second thought,” she said, peering through the hole in my curtains, “I’ll wait for you here. You know, since you’re the one with the mace.”

  Chapter Two

  Kenzie’s foot pressed on the gas, accelerating her mom’s second-to-last husband’s sports car to highway speed— four miles before we hit the highway.

  Pushing limits, stretching boundaries, breaking the rules, that was always more Kenzie’s thing than mine. I always secretly wanted it to be my thing, but I was never very good at doing anything but the right thing, until Kenzie came into my life.

  We’d been friends for as long as I could remember having friends. She’d been there for all of my big moments…for first kisses and first ditches, with unwavering support.

  She looked like the love child of Lenny Kravitz and Pink, if they’d ever hooked up. Her infamous Kiss-My-Asterix shirt impressed me, cause it totally matched her attitude. I still remember the day we met. A few years after my parents had died, I’d switched schools after moving in with my grandparents.

  Fifth grade, Davie Chalmers had stolen my pencil case again, and Kenzie marched straight up to him in the middle of math class and demanded that he give it back before she did indescribable things to parts of his anatomy neither of us had even come close to seeing in real life.

  He handed it back, and I spent an hour after school with her in detention hall, just to say thanks. That was Kenzie. Guess her the-whole-world-can-suck-it attitude still impressed me today. But right now, pretty much everything about my butt-kicking best friend was making me want to wring her meddling neck.

  “Now, just pretend you love kids and nature and puppets and all that crap, and you’ll do fine.”

  I propped my stiletto-heeled feet up onto the dash. “You’re insane. Have I ever told you that before?”

  She glanced over. “Once. Maybe twice.”

  “Well, good.” I scowled through the window. She meant well, I know. But I was dressed up like a fashion doll, for a job I had no chance of landing, and my feet were already killing me in her killer shoes.

  “Okay, so here’s how it works. There’s a series of interviews. You know, with the standard questions. Who are you; why do you want to work here; if you could save the orphans and the whales, how would you do it, blah, blah, blah.”

  “They could ask that?” It had been a while since I’d been interviewed. Not since tenth grade when I’d applied for a job at the market. The owners were friends of my grandfather’s, and the only question they’d asked was if I could work Sundays. This sounded a lot harder. My stomach knotted as I listened to the rest of her drill. I’d run lines with her countless times, and this felt the same, only in reverse. I was the one doing the rote memorization. With a lot more at stake.

  “Now repeat after me. I love working with children.” She sang, her perfectly manicured fingers hugging the wheel.

  I rolled my eyes but repeated the blatant lie. Not that I had anything against them. Kids were great. Maybe it’s because I never had any younger siblings around to get used to and didn’t do any babysitting either, or maybe it had something to do with my own less than normal childhood. But for whatever reason, they made me uncomfortable.

  “If you make it past the first round, then you move on to the second and finally the third. Word is that if you make it to three, you’re golden. But the first round is the hardest.”

  Her foot smashed the brakes at a red light, jerking us to an abrupt stop. Immediately, she fished out a tube of lipstick from inside the cupholder.

  “Shouldn’t I have had more than thirty minutes to prepare for this?”

  “Don’t sweat it. I emailed them your resume last night.”

  I shot her a look. “My resume. I don’t have a resume.”

  She beamed, pausing her lipstick application for a second. “You do now. You’re welcome.”

  The light changed, and we continued driving for another two hours before Kenzie steered the Jeep off the main highway onto a dirt road through a forest.

  I slumped back against the seat. I wasn’t a huge fan of the country. Too quiet, and not enough going on to distract me from my thoughts. Granddad said that if you listened hard enough, you’d hear the voice of God in the woods. Not sure if that’s true or not. Either I never listened hard enough, or the voice of God sounded an awful lot like my own personal demons.

  At some point along the drive I must have nodded off because I was roused by an elbow to the ribs.

  “Wake up, sleeping beauty. We’re here.”

  I yawned and stretched before opening the car door. Once we stepped outside, I froze. This was no regular summer camp. It was like a set straight out of a movie: Hogwarts meets Camp Half Blood. Twelve-foot iron gates behind us were lined with a thick row of hedges which made seeing inside, or escaping, virtually impossible.

  Beyond the gates, we were surrounded by thick, towering trees, a forest that would be even harder to escape. Inside, it was like a small village. Meandering paths through wild grass and massive log buildings with intricate architecture dotted with pockets of ancient evergreens. It was more like a posh summer retreat than a camp.

  “Come on,” Kenzie urged when I’d been gaping too long. “Punctuality counts.”

  We left Kenzie’s car parked next to an expensive sports car and then followed the lighted path toward a massive building with a tall steeple. Kenzie rolled her eyes every time I turned my ankle in her heels. Stilettoes were clearly not made for cobblestone.

  As we approached, my steps slowed a little. Two boys with nearly white-blonde hair and the strangest eyes I’d ever seen stood on either side of massive double doors.

  They smiled as we entered. It wasn’t until we walked past them that I noticed they each had one silver eye and one brown one. I smiled back a little fazed, not by their appearance, but by the eerie way they both moved in exact synchronization.

  When we entered the main hall, there was a castle-like waiting area, ornate and gothic, with towering statues and lighted paintings that bordered on chilling. And in the room sat at least two dozen people, all likely hoping for the same job I was applying for. Summer school instructor to the super rich.

  Some had guitars and nose rings. Others had tattoos, piercings, and green hair. One girl with strange markings on her neck had brought an entire easel, a fistful of brushes, and a palette loaded with oil paints. And a guy wearing a t-shirt that read ‘Hello my name is Steve, but you can call me master’ winked at Kenzie as we walked past.

  “See,” Kenzie whispered, “we fit right in.”

  I fingered my bone-straight black-and-teal hair, wishing I hadn’t given up the red. I’d chopped it to shoulder
length when Grandfather got sick. And then ombre-dyed the ends blue when he went into the hospital permanently.

  Kenzie with her tatts and me with my blue hair, we seemed just the sort of misfits this place was looking for, and that made me relax a little. But these people were something I wasn’t. Prepared.

  A tall slender woman with bright-green eyes and red hair stepped out into the middle of the crowd.

  “Welcome, everyone, to Wanderlust Academy Summer Arts Program Recruitment.”

  She spoke with a slight accent. British, I think.

  “You’ll be called by your appointed time slot, so please pay close attention.”

  I noticed the way her gaze kept locking with mine. It was unsettling, as if she knew me or something. Which I can pretty much guarantee she didn’t. Even Kenzie noticed.

  “Do you know her?” she whispered. But then her name was called first.

  Kenzie gave me a determined half-grin before she marched boldly into the office behind the redhead.

  Chapter Three

  I was so out of my element. I would turn twenty-two in a few months, and all I had to show for it academically was a few terms of sculpting at the community college. That hardly qualified me to teach at a prestigious art camp.

  I glanced around the room, checking out the other applicants. Each one probably had a resume filled with amazing skills and tons of real-life experience. Mine had to have been weak, aside from whatever Kenzie padded it with. Better not to focus on the competition. Instead, I focused on my surroundings.