All Fall Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

knows where she went, you’d better make a report now.”
    Saying nothing would be as bad as speaking with a liar’s tongue. Worse, even, because John Second’s asked right out loud for an answer. Besides, Bethany said Sunny was stupid. Sunny tells them about Bethany’s dad’s house. This makes Bethany’s mother snort with laughter. Bethany’s dad lives four hours away. Without money or a ride, there’s a good chance her daughter didn’t get very far.
    Not far enough, anyway. Sunny doesn’t know how they find her, but they bring her back and put her in the silent room. Bethany isn’t quiet. She screams for a long time while the rest of them pretend they hear nothing. They walk past and ignore the shrieks and sobs. They make their faces like stone.
    When the crying stops, John Second says there will be another day before they can let Bethany out, so she understands what it really means to be silent and learn to listen. And the day after that, Sunny is in the wrong place at the right time to see them pull Bethany out of the silent room. She’s limp and still and pale except for the parts where there’s blood.
    Nobody speaks of it. Ever. Not even Bethany’s mother. It’s like Bethany never existed except in some made-up place inside Sunny’s brain, and she knows that can’t be true because if she’d made her up, Bethany would never have called Sunny stupid. She’d have been Sunny’s friend. And she wouldn’t have killed herself, either. She’d have stayed inside Sanctuary the way Sunny does, scrubbing floors and waiting for the rainbow to take them through the gates.
    Sunny has thought of Bethany often over the years. Her freckles. Her smudged eyes. Her hair. Most of all, the things she’d screamed when she was in the silent room, about how she hated the family. Hated Sanctuary. She’d screamed out lists of places and things she didn’t hate. McDonald’s, Starbucks, Hersheypark, Walmart, Ocean City. Cheeseburgers, cable television, rap music, video games, Coca-Cola, sugar, cupcakes, French fries. Eyeliner, lipstick, tampons, birth control.
    Those were worldly things, and Sunny thought of them now. What had been so wonderful about worldly things that had made having them so much better than being in Sanctuary? What was it about the world that had made Bethany willing to give up any chance she had of going through the gates?
    Here in this tiny, pink-painted bathroom in her father’s house, her biological father’s house, the man she hadn’t even known existed before yesterday, Sunny wondered how long it would be before John Second discovered where she’d gone and came to take them back to Sanctuary. She washed her hands over and over again. They were almost raw with clean, but she washed them again anyway. Her children were in the kitchen with her father’s wife. Her children were outside, and Sunny was inside, and she should go to them, but instead she squirted more soap into her palm and ran the water so hot it turned her skin red.
    She ought to go out, but all she could do was look at her face in the mirror and wonder what in this world was so wonderful it was worth dying for.

Chapter 3
    “H ere,” Liesel said to the little boy sitting propped up on one of the kitchen bar stools. “Do you like chocolate milk?”
    “He’s never had it. But he will probably like it. It’s sweet, right?” said the boy’s mother doubtfully.
    She’d been in the bathroom so long Liesel had started to worry, but now she was out. She’d said her name was Sunny. Sunshine. It was a ridiculous name but suited her, with the blond, blond hair and those blue eyes.
    Chris and Liesel both looked at her. It had taken him almost forty minutes to get home, and that had been after twenty minutes of Liesel trying to reach him. Close to two hours had passed since Liesel had opened the door to find Sunshine and her children on the doorstep, and it already seemed like a lifetime.
    “Yes,” Liesel said. “It’s