Sticks and Stones by Angèle Gougeon Read Free Book Online Page A

left of those girls to find.
    It seemed like the world should’ve changed. But classes were the same. The same kids with the same lax attitudes and whispers and gossip and hidden laughs. No one thought about Nikki Trite, and after a while not many thought about Lydia Barsowich either. Sandra guessed it was easier to think she’d also run away; better than believing there was something dark and sinister out there. Someone with a knife and greedy hands and—
    Sandra didn’t remember much from her vision anymore.
    But she remembered that there were three girls.
    She hoped he didn’t still have them, in that dark pit somewhere, bleeding and scared.
    He was still going to take one more and she didn’t know who it was.
    “Miss Daron, please stay after class.”
    Amanda gave her a commiserating look as she gathered her books, grabbing up her bag on her way out of the room with the rest of the class.
    “Don’t forget to hand in your papers!” Mr. Murray shouted after them, looking even surlier than normal and Sandra marched slowly up to the desk, dread pooling low in her stomach.
    “That’s the third time this week, Miss Daron,” he said, as he shuffled the pile of papers into some semblance of order. “You have to start paying attention. This can’t continue any longer.”
    “I know,” she said, swallowing fast. “And I’m sorry, Mr. Murray. I don’t mean to. I just…”
    He paused in settling the papers into his briefcase. “What has you so distracted?”
    Sandra mumbled an inaudible reply, shrugging, and Mr. Murray sighed. “Times have been hard, Miss Daron. I understand that. I’m not quite the ogre everyone makes me out to be.” Sandra stared wide-eyed as he actually smiled – a small one, granted, but a smile nonetheless. “You were friends with Miss Barsowich.”
    Sandra just nodded her head, because it was easier than saying she hadn’t really known her at all, but thought that maybe she’d seen her die.
    “I’ve been assured that the police are doing everything they can to locate Miss Barsowich. They’ll find her.” His grin was reassuring, and Sandra fought down a sudden surge of bile.
    “Yeah. I know.”
    “Off to your next class, Miss Daron.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    Sandra slowly left the room, wishing she had someone other than the boys she could confide in to say: those girls aren’t coming home .
    Lydia Barsowich hadn’t run away.
    Most of all, she hoped she was wrong and Nikki Trite had run away from this town. That fourteen-year-old Lydia was safe somewhere, maybe not happy, but certainly not dead. That there was no third girl that was going to disappear.
    Jack and Daniel’s worried eyes met her after school, her fears followed her, and for the first time in over half a year Sandra dreamed of worn jeans and a dusty cotton skirt and a hole in her neck as she gasped and gasped until she woke herself up, breathing hard, heady with the heavy pounding thud of her own heart.
    She kept remembering being this girl and that girl and the other girl, with his knife in her throat, and their dirty clothing rasping across her aching, wounded skin. She saw it in her dreams at night, but Sandra felt his hands during the day. Sometimes, during class, she’d undergo a crippling blow, hear a toneless voice murmuring in her ears, feel clawing fingers and cold metal and the ropes that tried to hold her down.
    Sometimes she’d come to shaking, hands gripping the edge of her desk or her chair so hard she had lost all feeling in her fingers, the rest of the class unaware and Amanda giving her strange looks. Her schoolwork suffered and, no matter how hard Lem and the boys tried, they couldn’t help her.
    They didn’t have horrible images running through their heads.
    They had no idea.
    “Miss Daron?”
    Sandra sighed and shuffled around, eyes sore and burning. Mr. Murray struggled down the hall, his packed briefcase in one hand and a box in the other with several books balanced on top.
    “Do you