The Girl Below by Bianca Zander Read Free Book Online Page B

overhead, and I saw my dad’s face, his worried eyes searching through the murk. I was near the bottom of the stairs. I managed a whimper, the noise an injured puppy might make, and he found me and scooped me into his arms.
    Up on the surface, daylight blinded and stung my eyes. I put my hand to my face and touched my glasses. I did not understand how they’d found their way back to me. My father, I supposed, must have picked them up. A while later I realized that the pain had gone. I wasn’t even crying, though I was sure I had been right before I passed out.
    Dad carried me inside over his shoulder, and with his other not-quite-free hand, tried to comfort my mother, who was shaking uncontrollably. When he put me down on the bed, she started weeping. “I thought it was the end,” she said through tears. “I thought I’d finally made it happen, that I’d killed her.”
    My father laid a steadying hand on her arm. “It was an accident,” he said, wearily. “She fell off the step, that’s all.”
    “Nobody pushed me,” I said, hoping to clear things up. “I just slipped.”
    “I know, dear,” said Mum. “I know.” She attempted a smile. “We’ve all had a terrible fright, but the main thing is, you’re okay.”
    Dad left me alone with Mum, and she helped me out of my wet clothes. Was I okay? I certainly didn’t feel it. Everything around me looked familiar but I wasn’t sure if I was seeing any of it through my own eyes. My bare skin too felt like borrowed clothes and under my ribs was a growing, hollow patch of hunger for something that wasn’t food.
    “What is it, weenie?” said Mum, using the nickname she’d given me as an infant, when I’d been small and weak and often sick. “Do you feel unwell? I hope you haven’t caught a chill.”
    I wanted so much to tell her what had happened down in the bunker but when I opened my mouth to speak, I burst into tears, and anything I might have said was swallowed up by long, unruly shudders. Mum pulled me to her chest, and rubbed my back and made hushing noises. “I should never have let you go down there,” she said. “This is all my fault.”
    After a time I stopped crying, but I felt no better, nor was I ready to speak. A hundred horrible images crowded my head but they were too muddled to put into words. “I’m thirsty,” was all I could manage.
    Mum led me to the kitchen, where she took a box of pineapple juice out of the fridge, left over from last night’s punch. “By the way,” she said, pouring me a glass, “have you seen my locket? It isn’t in my jewelry box, and I know that’s where I left it.”
    She had taken me by surprise—wasn’t I still being comforted?—and I guiltily put my hand to my neck, but the locket wasn’t there. The last time I remembered wearing it was down in the bunker. What if someone made me go down there again to look for it? “No,” I said, quickly. “I haven’t seen it.”
    Mum stopped what she was doing. “Are you sure?”
    “I haven’t seen it since last night.”
    She fished around in the pocket of her jeans and held something out in the palm of her hand. “That’s odd,” she said, “because this morning I found this.” She showed me a tiny nugget of silver, the broken catch.
    “Oh,” I said, feigning surprise. “It’s broken.”
    “Yes, it is.” Mum paused. “I found it in your room, Suki. Next to the carving knife.”
    Blood surged through my head, deafening me. Then, over the noise, squeaked a voice that didn’t sound like mine, “It was Esther.”
    “I beg your pardon?” said Mum.
    “Esther did it. We played with your jewelry box when you were asleep.”
    Mum eyeballed me for a long time, and I stood in front of her, dumbstruck by my audacity.
    “And you don’t know where the rest of it is?”
    I shook my head.
    “I knew I shouldn’t have taken it off,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Even with the other necklace on, I looked nothing like Mae West.”
    We went to