Pandora's Key by Nancy Richardson Fischer Read Free Book Online

but Raphe heard her.
    “I sure hope not.” He was grinning. “I’ve liked you for a long time, E, but since you never noticed, I gave myself the deadline of your birthday to do something about it.”
    “Why?”
Stupid! Don’t point out your faults or he’ll change his mind!
    “Maybe cause you don’t know how great you are.”
    Evangeline felt her cheeks warm but she didn’t mind.
    “That okay with you?”
    “Yeah.” Evangeline was grinning now, too.
    “Good.” Raphe stepped on his skateboard and she couldn’t help but notice how his jeans hung off his hips and the thin band of skin that showed beneath the hem of his shirt. Raphe waved, and rolled away.
    Evangeline stood on the porch watching him until he disappeared around the corner.
Sweet sixteen and kissed—Raphe has liked me for a long time?—Can life actually start to be getting good? Sweet sixteen and kissed!
    “Hi, I’m home!” Evangeline kicked the front door closed behind her. She tossed the baseball cap onto the hall bench, kicked off her Adidas, and padded into the kitchen. Usually there was a snack for her on the counter, but today there was only a vase with some flowers that had been wilting when she’d left for school but that now looked freshly cut. Her mom sure had a green thumb.
    Jasmine was perched on her favorite window ledge and Evangeline scratched the cat behind one of her drooping ears until she purred. “I’m sixteen and I’ve been kissed,” she whispered to the tabby. Jasmine yawned and closed her eyes. Supposedly the cat had belonged to her grandmother, Cleo, and was at least sixty years old. The vet didn’t believe it and neither did Evangeline, but her mom always swore it was true. Regardless, the ancient tabby had probably been kissed a few times in her day and wasn’t impressed at all by Evangeline’s news.
    Her mom wasn’t in the kitchen, so she stepped down into the sunroom that doubled as an art studio. An overwhelming, intoxicating perfume greeted her, so thick it was almost palatable. Evangeline wandered into a sea of canvases, some finished and resting on the floor, others sitting on easels half-done or waiting to dry and be transported to whatever gallery was currently showing her mother’s work. On every canvas was painted a flower. What made them different from the work of other artists was that these flowers, in vibrant shades and jarring color combinations, didn’t exist anywhere in the world—only in her mother’s mind. But for some reason they still seemed, well, possible.
    A strange notion came to Evangeline.
No, I can’t be smelling mom’s paintings
, she thought.
They’re not real in any sense.
She touched the electric purple flower on a canvas, tracing the hard ridges and swirls of paint. For a heartbeat the petals softened into velvet. Gasping, she snatched her hand away.
    There was a canvas set on an easel in the corner of the sunroom that was covered with a paint-splattered drop cloth. It was the painting her mom had been refusing to show her. Evangeline glanced over her shoulder, and then quickly lifted the cloth.
    The painting was of Evangeline—or at least of the daughter a mother saw through her own eyes. Using all the vibrant colors she used for her flowers, her mom had fashioned bold brush strokes and sharp edges into a beautiful face. Evangeline stared at the image’s eyes. Instead of being too big, they looked feline, slanting slightly upward at the far corners. The blue irises she’d always called eerie were the color of a storm-filled night sky. Her out-of-control blonde curls looked like a lion’s mane (like Raphe had said), and her lips, which were still as wide as a jack-o-lantern’s, seemed soft and provocative—like they had a secret they were about to share.
    “It’s me, but it’s not me,” Evangeline said quietly, absently caressing the black key in just the way her mother had always touched the necklace. Why had her mom made her look like someone she wasn’t;