Ledge Walkers by Rosalyn Wraight Read Free Book Online Page A

was. It's probably time we added a veggie burger to our menu."

    "What are you going to call it?” Laura asked. “A Vicious Vegan?"

    "On a bed of one hundred percent organic cotton,” Claudia added.

    "Enough already!” Ginny said. “If we have to eat these humungous things, the least you could do is join us and eat your lunch!"

    Holly stood up, held her burger high, and yelled, “Okay, on the count of three, everybody. One ... two ... three!"

    Astonishingly, everyone, including me, took a bite. I knew my throat was preparing to set a roadblock to my stomach, but in the nick of time, I realized it tasted okay, rather good actually. I voluntarily chewed it, and it slid where it belonged, unimpeded. “Pretty good,” I said and prepared for another bite of what was once hot-off-the-grill.

    The rest of the group seemed to concur, and the feasting began.

    Molly kissed both Ginny and Kris goodbye, saying she needed to get back to the bar. Everyone thanked her, and the ruckus promptly resumed upon her departure.

    With a mouth full of food, Alison said, “I remember a time when my Home Ec was actually combined with my lunch. We didn'tproperly seal a baked Alaska, and the ice cream melted all over the oven. The b-word of a teacher made us miss lunch to clean the oven. Anybody else have a horror story?"

    "I remember one,” Laura offered.

    I quickly teased, “Aw, Laura, you wanted to be a domestic goddess? How sweet!"

    "Actually, I wanted one,” she corrected with a smirk.

    "Did you get one?” Susan asked, and it dawned on me that she was still intrigued by what had happened in our gym class.

    "Just the goddess,” she replied and leaned in to give Holly a kiss.

    "Oh no, don't let them kiss!” Alison said, hiding her laughter behind an overused napkin.

    "Speaking of b-words,” Laura said and cleared her throat. “Doesn't anyone want to hear my Home Ec story?"

    "I do, hon,” Holly cajoled. “Go ahead."

    "Well, after this big to-do, it's not very funny anymore."

    "Just tell the damn story, Laura! We need something to do while these mad cow women take their own sweet time,” I barked.

    "Fine. We were making brownies. I bet this happens in every Home Ec class. This guy in our group decided it would be funny to toss a nickel bag of pot into the batter—"

    "Oh, and I bet you perp-walked his ass to the principal's office, huh?” I teased. “Did you collar him?"

    "No ... I ate the brownies."

    "You didn't!” Susan said, coming nowhere near concealing her shock that the lawful one would do such a thing.
    “When did you decide to become a cop then?"

    "AfterI got perp-walked to the principal's office,” she said, smiling as Susan gasped. “Just kidding. Actually, I was in college when I made the decision."

    "Can I be nosy and ask what made you decide?"

    Laura got quiet for a moment, and then she said. “It's one of those things they should have taught in school so we can all grow up to be—What is it you keep saying, Claudia?"

    "Strong, healthy women,” she replied with an affirmative nod of her head.

    "There was a girl in my dorm who got raped. I remember feeling so angry,” she recalled. “But I never sawher get angry. She just shrank away from everything, pulled inside—like there was something wrong with her instead what had happened to her. Eventually she just dropped out. I remember thinking that for something that took a total of ten horrific minutes, she was still being hurt and would always be affected by it. It made me think hard about a lot of things and what I could do. I was studying microbiology. I figured I could spend my time learning about anything the son-of-a-bitch might have given her, or I could hunt his ass down so he could pay instead of her. I dropped out and enrolled at the academy."

    "Very commendable,” Kris remarked.

    "Not really. Commendable would be finding the sons-of-bitches before they hurt someone. Not after."

    "Um, your friendly neighborhood reporter here