The Graduation by Christopher Pike Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t bother undoing the screws on the screens. The overhang was too far for him to reach, even if he were to hang out the window. He hurried downstairs to the garage instead, where he found a tall ladder. After assorted jostling and banging noises—and, thank God, Polly’s nearest neighbors were more than a hundred yards away—he had the ladder situated beneath the bedroom window. Unfortunately, it wasn’t tall enough for him to reach the shingle.
    He had come down the ladder and was returning it to the garage, walking past the pool where Nick had almost drowned The Rock and beside the covered patio attached to the rear of the house, when he spotted the piece of yellowed paper lying in the grass next to the bushes. He set the ladder down and picked it up.
    It was the permission form he had given Polly to have her aunt sign so that he could examine Alice’s autopsy report. Polly had never returned it to him. It looked as if it had been sitting outside in the elements since that day. He stuffed it in his pocket.
    He wasn’t crazy about his next plan. He almost hoped, as he searched the garage after replacing the ladder on its hooks, that Polly didn’t have any rope. Then he’d have an excuse not to play Mr. Roofer. But in a cabinet above the workbench, he soon found a fifty-foot coil of one-inch cord.
    He didn’t return to the bedroom, but took the second-story-hallway door onto the porch that overlooked the backyard. The shingles came directly down onto the tar floor of the porch, giving him easy access to the roof. Climbing up toward the peak of the house, Michael felt the hot sun on the back of his head, the slickness of the wood beneath his feet. He was glad he had chosen to wear his tennis shoes that morning.
    If I slip and break my neck, people will say I committed suicide.
    At the ridge, he tied one end of the rope to the sturdiest vent he could find, the other end around his waist. With the life insurance in hand, creeping down toward the broken shingle was not nearly so intimidating as he had imagined it would be. He actually found it quite exhilarating. He wasn’t even worried about the neighbors. Not many crooks climbed onto a victim’s roof in the middle of the day and performed gymnastics.
    A moment later he was kneeling beside the shingle, forty feet above the spot where Alice and he had had their last talk over the hot coals of the barbecue. He felt the damaged edge and was immediately taken by its smoothness. There were splinters, yes, but they—
    They were turned upwards .
    Strange, very strange. Did the roofers break the shingle while it was lying upside down on the ground, and then install it? He found that hard to believe.
    It was fortunate that he had a safety line. His next discovery almost sent him reeling. Placing his head inches from the finely splintered edge, he noticed a number of tiny round metal pellets embedded in the wood. He dug them out with his nail, studied them in his palm.
    They were from a shotgun blast.

Chapter Eight
    The stadium stands were packed, and the football field was jammed with gray folding chairs and blue-robed seniors. The ceremony would start in minutes. Sara still hadn’t finished rewriting her speech. Jessica hadn’t decided which song to sing. It was hot and getting hotter.
    “Should I bring up the state of the environment?” Sara asked. “People are always talking about pollution. Maybe I could work it into my overall theme.”
    “What is your overall theme?” Jessica asked.
    Sara glanced at her notes. “Isn’t it obvious from what I’ve told you so far?” she asked anxiously.
    “No.”
    “Jessie!”
    “Well, I’m hardly listening to you. I have problems of my own. I can’t sing the Beatles song I rehearsed.”
    “Why not?”
    “Mr. Bark says it’s too racist.”
    “‘All You Need Is Love’ is racist?”
    “That’s what he says. He wants a song with more of a political message, like ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ or something.” She