Blog Tour: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN WATER AND SKY:: EXCERPT
I am so in love with Elora Ramirez's Somewhere Between Water and Sky. it's a gorgeous book in a beautiful series and I'm super excited to share it with y'all. Check out the release day launch and Elora's super special giveaway!!
Somewhere Between Water and Sky Synopsis:
I heard it said once that every human is a story with skin. If this is true, paragraphs would be etched in the scars on my wrists. Whole chapters could be written about the way my heart pounds when I startle awake. And every single one of my tears could fill a book. But stories, with all their promise, only leave room for disappointment. I don’t have room for that anymore. I left it all—the hope, the love, the promise—back in my old life with the ghosts I’d rather forget: Jude. Emma. Pacey. This is how I dare to move forward and to believe in a new beginning. I let go of the old. I just grab the new and run. I don’t wait around anymore. I can’t. Waiting leaves room for the voices. Somewhere between water and sky, I'll find a way to burn these voices to the ground.
I heard it said once that every human is a story with skin. If this is true, paragraphs would be etched in the scars on my wrists. Whole chapters could be written about the way my heart pounds when I startle awake. And every single one of my tears could fill a book. But stories, with all their promise, only leave room for disappointment. I don’t have room for that anymore. I left it all—the hope, the love, the promise—back in my old life with the ghosts I’d rather forget: Jude. Emma. Pacey. This is how I dare to move forward and to believe in a new beginning. I let go of the old. I just grab the new and run. I don’t wait around anymore. I can’t. Waiting leaves room for the voices. Somewhere between water and sky, I'll find a way to burn these voices to the ground.
She’s
standing in the middle of a small field that used to be a parking lot. Turning
to look at us with a glint in her eye, she tilts her head toward the building
and smiles.
“Took
you guys long enough.”
I squint to get a better look at the
structure and grimace. It’s run down—missing
doors and shingles. Noting the graffiti and debris around and inside, it’s
not totally abandoned. I imagine at any moment there are a variation of social
misfits and dregs of society claiming this property as their own.
“Wanna
go explore?” Jessa’s voice is hopeful and full of
excitement.
No. No I do not want to go explore.
“Um….”
“Oh
come on. It’s begging to be explored.”
I squeeze my hands into fists. “It’s
begging for someone to step on any number of forgotten and rusty drug needles.”
Ren holds up his hands and then points
to the building.
“Jessa,
that’s a nightmare waiting to happen.”
She laughs and then turns around,
walking toward the building.
I shake my head, crossing my arms.
“Fuck
that. I’m not going in there.”
Ren groans and lifts his face to the
sky, beginning to follow her and leaving me behind, dodging broken beer bottles
and trash. I hesitate for a few moments, watching the distance between me and
them get larger, and then feel a growing sense of being watched.
I turn around quickly, my pulse
pounding in my ears; my arms growing heavy.
No one’s there.
I bring my hands up to my face and
massage my temples. Breathe, Stephanie. Breathe. I laugh under my breath
and call out to Ren.
“Hey!
Wait up.”
He stops and Jessa throws her fist in
the air in celebration. “I knew you guys would do this.”
Ren mutters under his breath and steps
in front of Jessa, his phone serving as a flashlight.
“Just
let me go in first?”
She glowers at him.
“Whatever.”
We walk through the door and I look
around.
“Was
this a hotel of some kind?”
Ren points his phone toward an area
that looks like a lobby. In the corner on the other side of the room is the
stump of what used to be one of those massive office plants. His voice isn’t
more than a whisper.
“It
looks like it.”
Something crashes against the floor
upstairs and Ren jumps. Jessa screams and flings herself into his arms.
I just stand there, every piece of me
tingling. If I thought I could hear my pulse in my ears outside, now it’s
roaring to life—I’m pretty sure I feel it in my
fingernails.
“What
the fuck.” My breath comes out raspy—I’m
barely moving my lips, as if in moving anything I’m
giving credence to the noise above us.
Ren sniffs and moves his eyes upward.
“Hello?” A
voice from above us wanders across the lobby.
That’s a kid’s voice, I think, swallowing my dread.
Our eyes go wide simultaneously. Ren
puts his finger over his mouth, signaling for us to be quiet. Jessa’s
mouthing expletives.
“I
swear to God if it’s a fucking clown I’m
fucking gone.”
Elora Ramirez lives in Austin, Texas with her chef-husband. At the age of four, she taught herself how to read and write, cutting her teeth on books like Dr. Seuss and writing anywhere she could find the space--including her Fisher Price kitchen set, the pages of picture books and Highlights Magazine. Since then, she's grown to love the way words feel as they swell within her bones. Writing holy and broken is her calling, and pushing back the darkness and pursuing beauty through story is her purpose. She embraces the power of story and teaches women from all parts of the world how to embrace theirs. She has a knack of calling things out , the truth and the detail, the subversive threads that make a life a story. She loves hip-hop, wishes she lived by the beach and cannot write without copious amounts of coffee, chocolate, music, and her husband's lavender liqueur.
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