Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl by Carolita Blythe Read Free Book Online Page B

immediately, and I run through the lobby and to the stairs, taking them two at a time as I make it up to Caroline’s fourth-floor apartment. The door opens without me even pressing the bell, and Caroline’s big fat mitt of a hand comes forward, grabs me by the collar of my coat, and yanks me in.
    “You shut it till we get to my room,” she whispers, whichmeans she’s actually speaking at normal-person level. “My mom’s in the living room sewing. Just shout hi to her as we walk by.”
    Mrs. Johns is wedged behind the Singer sewing machine she has set up in the corner of the room, along with mounds of clothes and bobbins of thread and pincushions shaped like tomatoes and onions.
    I hardly get a “Hi, Mrs. Johns” out before I’m being pushed into Caroline’s room, with the door closing behind me.
    Gillian’s sitting at a desk near the window, staring at me.
    “What fool thing did you do?” Caroline asks.
    “I went over there.”
    “Why?”
    “I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t dead. But the door opened. Don’t you think if she was alive she would have gotten up and locked it?”
    But Caroline doesn’t answer that question. Instead, she just comes at me with another one.
    “How stupid are you? Seriously. What if somebody saw you messing around at her door? What if somebody had called the cops on your ass?”
    “I didn’t think about that. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t dead,” I say as I sit on the edge of Caroline’s bed. “Maybe we should make a call to someone anonymously.”
    “To who? If she’s dead, what the hell does it matter?” Caroline asks as she leans against her dresser. “I mean, she was like a thousand. And if she’s not dead now, she will be in no time. No fault of ours, just the natural order of things.And we got a lot of money from this. So think about that instead.”
    “Doesn’t it bother you any?” I ask.
    “I mean, I don’t want to be responsible for some dead old person. But there are worse things in life. Besides, I wasn’t the one who pushed her, so it’s not on my conscience any.”
    And my jaw just hits the floor. I can’t figure out what to say next. Can’t even unscramble all that’s going on in my brain, so I get quiet instead. I think of turning my back on Caroline right then and there and never seeing her again. But then I think how she and Gillian were the only ones to stick up for me when I first moved to the neighborhood and those roughneck girls were tormenting me. And they do seem to genuinely like having me as part of their crew. I don’t know. I suppose it’s better to be accepted by someone, no matter how contrary they can be sometimes, than to not have any friends in the neighborhood at all.
    I glance over at Gillian, who still hasn’t said a word. She just shifts her eyes from Caroline to me and back to Caroline again.
    The tension is momentarily interrupted by a knock on the door. Mrs. Johns comes in with a tray of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and three glasses of milk.
    “Faye, you flew in here like a little bumblebee,” she says as she puts the tray down and smothers my face in her giant breasts. “How was school?”
    “Fine,” I mumble.
    She takes a glass of milk and puts it in front of me.
    “Um, I can’t drink milk, ma’am. Remember …?”
    “Oh, that’s right. I guess I think if I keep giving it to you, that all might change. Just never knew a child who couldn’t drink milk.”
    “It hurts my stomach.”
    Mrs. Johns shakes her head. “That’s why you’re so itty-bitty. Milk fattens you up.”
    I glance over at Caroline and decide that if that’s the case, she should probably never go within ten miles of a cow.
    “Well. I’ll bring you some Hi-C,” she says. “I think we have cherry.”
    “Cherry’s my favorite,” I say.
    Mrs. Johns manages to find what little cheeks I have and squeeze them. Then she walks out of the room with the tray under her left arm and one glass of milk in her right hand.