Taking Care of Terrific by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page B

errand for the station manager, and I saw you in the Public Garden, hanging out with that black guy. He's practically old enough to be your father."
    I groaned. But I lowered my voice, too, in case my mother was still spying. I didn't want my parents to know about Hawk; it was just too complicated. "That's just a
friend,
Seth—"
    He laughed his sinister, knowing laugh. "That's what they all start out thinking," he said.
    "All
who?
"
    "Young girls who come to Boston and meet these guys in the parks. Seems like a simple pickup at first. I saw this TV show about it. A documentary; we have it on tape down at the station. These older guys befriend them, maybe loan them a little money—"
    I thought of Hawk, buying me and Tom Terrific each a green Popsicle. He hadn't said it was a
loan.
    Seth was going on and on. "Then before they know it, they're trapped. Hooked on heroin, probably. Owing hundreds of dollars. So they go to work for the guy. There they are, prostitutes, only fourteen years old. Three weeks before, they were innocent little cheerleaders, back in Ohio—"
    "Knock it off, Seth."
    "Eventually their bodies are found, in warehouses and culverts. Needle marks on their arms. Knife scars. One of them was disemboweled; they couldn't show it on the film, it was too gruesome.
The detective who found her had tears rolling down his cheeks during the interview. 'She could have been my own little girl,' he said—"
    "Seth," I said furiously. "You. Are. Such. A. CREEP."
    His voice changed from the sinister whisper to an arrogant, know-it-all sort of voice. "You may think I'm a creep," he said. "But your parents won't think I'm a creep when I come over there wearing a clean shirt in order to
warn
them about what the future holds for their precious, brainy, artistically talented little girl."
    Now I was really mad. "You wouldn't," I said.
    "Wouldn't IP" He laughed. "Unless—"
    "Unless what?" He was going to blackmail me in some way. I could hear it coming.
    "Meet me at your corner in fifteen minutes," said Seth. "We'll walk over to Florian's and get a couple of those fruit drinks."
    The Café Florian sells these great drinks in summer: fresh fruit all zapped in a blender.
    "Those are
expensive,
Seth." I groaned. "If you're going to blackmail me, couldn't you start small, maybe with a Coke?"
    "Don't sweat it," said Seth. "I'll pay. Fifteen minutes, at your corner." He hung up.
    I went to my room and combed my hair and
put on a sweater. Then I went back downstairs to tell my parents that I was going to meet a blackmailer in order to persuade him not to let them know that I was about to be part of the white-slave traffic, seduced by a strange man I'd met in the Public Garden, that I would probably be hooked on heroin quite soon, that they would likely never see me again.
    "I'm meeting Seth," I said casually. "We're going over to the Café Florian for a little while."
    "That's nice, dear," said my mother, looking up briefly from a medical journal.
    "Be home by ten," said my father, adjusting the color on the TV.
    Seth was waiting on the corner when I got there, his body kind of draped against a tree. He's skinny, all arms and legs, and he was wearing cut-off jeans and a tee shirt, which made his arms and legs more visible than they are during the school year. Our school has a dress code: jackets and ties for the guys; skirts or dresses for the girls. We all look like a bunch of corporation executives during school. Even our hair has to be neat. After the movie "
10
" came out, Trina Bentley came to school with her hair like Bo Derek's, in a million miniature braids decorated with beads, and she was sent home to undo it,
even though it had cost forty-five dollars to have it done that way. Then there was a big flap because the three black girls in the Upper School argued that
they
should be able to wear their hair Bo Derek style since that was an authentic Afro-American style. Finally there was a compromise: braids