Haunting Olivia by Janelle Taylor Read Free Book Online

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    Janelle Taylor
    are just plain wrong. You’re a good, kind, warm, funny, beautiful person in there,” he had said, pointing to the vicinity of her heart.
    “But when I get in trouble, doesn’t that prove I’m not a good person?” she had asked. “How could I have inner beauty if I’m always getting grounded?”
    “Kayla, I know that when you mess up, you know you’re messing up. You know you’re not doing the right thing. That’s part of what inner beauty is. It’s knowing. You’re thirteen and I’ve got to give you some leeway for that alone, but not much, honey.
    Real inner beauty means knowing what the right thing is and doing it. And I know you’re more than capable of that.”
    “If I did enter and I did win—as if—do you think my mother would find out?” she had asked without looking at him, tears pooling in her eyes.
    He had squeezed her hand. “I don’t know, honey.”
    Kayla received two cards a year from her mother: one for her birthday and one for Christmas. There was never a personal message, just, “Dear Kayla”
    and “Your Mother.”
    Real warm.
    Last year, Kayla began ripping them up. All years previous, she opened them eagerly, hoping for an enclosed letter, a photo, a “How are you?” But she was always disappointed. He supposed on some basic level the impersonal cards were better than nothing. Nothing would be much, much worse.
    The cards were just an eighth of an inch up from nothing, but every year on her birthday and at Christmas, he breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the card in the mailbox, no return address, just a postmark from New York, New York.

    HAUNTING OLIV IA
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    “If I did win and she found out,” Kayla had said last night, “she would probably feel really bad about just abandoning me the way she did. She would be, like, ‘Wow, I messed up by walking out on Kayla. She’s special—
    she won the Inner-Beauty Pageant just like I did.’”
    He had grabbed his daughter into a hug and hadn’t even bothered trying to hide the fact that he’d had tears in his eyes. “Kayla Archer, I want to make sure you know one thing: you’ve been special from the day you were born. You’re the most special thing in the world to me. Your mother didn’t leave us because you weren’t special. She left because she couldn’t deal with having a family. That’s about her —not you.”
    “I’m still going to show her what she missed out on,” Kayla had said, the sparkle back in her eyes.
    “Can I be ungrounded so I can enter and do whatever stupid stuff I have to do?”
    He had smiled. “You’re still grounded. But you may enter the contest and you may do all the wonderful things necessary to compete in the pageant.
    You’re in luck that I can take off this week from work. I can go with you everywhere you need to go.”
    She had frowned, then smiled. “I’m going to beat Brianna by, like, a million points. I have so much more inner beauty than she does.”
    He had wagged his finger at her. “Those with inner beauty don’t say things like that.”
    She had grinned. “Do they think things like that?”
    “Sometimes. If they really can’t help it.”
    “I really can’t,” she had said.
    He’d yanked her braid and off they’d gone to the diner.

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    Janelle Taylor
    Once inside, he found the entry forms available in a manila folder on the community bulletin board.
    “I have to write an essay just to enter?” Kayla complained, studying the rules on the application. “I’ll fail the application! I won’t even get to enter.”
    “What does the essay have to be about?”
    She frowned and shoved the entry form away.
    “What inner beauty means to me.”
    Thank you, he directed heavenward. This could not have been a more perfect assignment for Kayla this week.
    Their breakfast was served, and Kayla dug into her scrambled eggs and bacon. While he drank his coffee, Zach took a minute to read the flyer and the rules.
    The town of Blueberr y announces