Brain Child Read Online Free PDF

the hacienda as it had looked a hundred and fifty years earlier. Except that the new gates were wired withalarms and swung smoothly open on electrically controlled rollers. And then, after the wall was complete, Cynthia had begun the restoration of the mansion and the outbuildings.
    Almost everybody in La Paloma had gone up to the top of Hacienda Drive once or twice, but the gates were always closed, and no one had succeeded in getting inside the walls. Alex, along with some of his friends, had climbed the hills a few times to peer down into the courtyard, but all they’d been able to see was the exterior work—the new plaster and the whitewashing, and the replacement of the red tiles on the roof.
    What everyone was truly waiting for was a glimpse of the interior, and now Carolyn was saying her friends could see it that very night.
    Alex eyed her skeptically. “I thought your mother wasn’t letting anyone in until next month.”
    “Mom and Dad are in San Francisco for the weekend,” Carolyn said.
    “I don’t know—” Alex began, remembering his promise not to go to any parties after the dance.
    “Don’t know about what?” Lisa asked, slipping her arm through his.
    “He doesn’t want to come to my party,” Carolyn replied before Alex could say anything.
    Lisa’s eyes widened. “There’s a party? At the hacienda?”
    Carolyn nodded with elaborate casualness. “Bob and Kate are coming, and Jenny Lang, and everybody.”
    Lisa turned to Alex. “Well, let’s go!” Alex flushed and looked uncomfortable, but said nothing. The band struck up the last dance and Lisa led Alex onto the floor. “What’s wrong?” she asked a moment later. “Why can’t we go to Carolyn’s party?”
    “ ’Cause I don’t want to.”
    “You just don’t like Carolyn,” Lisa argued. “But you won’t even have to talk to her. Everybody else will be there too.”
    “It isn’t that.”
    “Then what is it?”
    “I promised my folks we wouldn’t go to any parties. Dad gave me some money to take some of the kids out for a hamburger, and I promised we’d come home right after that.”
    Lisa fell silent for a few seconds; then: “We don’t have to tell them where we were.”
    “They’d find out.”
    “But don’t you even want to see the place?”
    “Sure, but—”
    “Then let’s go. Besides, it’s not where we go that your mom and dad are worried about—they’re afraid you’ll drink. So we’ll go to the party, but we won’t even have a beer. And we won’t stay very long.”
    “Come on, Lisa. I promised them I wouldn’t—”
    But Lisa suddenly broke away from him and started pulling him off the dance floor. “Let’s find Kate and Bob. Maybe we can convince them to go up to Carolyn’s with us for just a few minutes, then the four of us can go out for hamburgers. That way we can see the place, and you won’t have to lie to your folks.”
    As Lisa led him out of the gym, Alex knew he’d give in, even though he shouldn’t. With Lisa, it was hard not to give in—she always managed to make everything sound perfectly logical, even when Alex was sure it wasn’t.
    The headlights of Alex’s Mustang picked up the open gates of the hacienda, and he braked the car to a stop. “Are we supposed to park out here, or go inside?”
    Lisa shrugged. “Search me. Carolyn didn’t say.” Suddenly a horn sounded, and Bob Carey’s Porsche pulled up beside them, its window rolled down.
    “Over there,” Bob called. He was pointing off to the left, where a small group of cars already stood parked in the shadow of the wall. Following Bob, Alex maneuvered the Mustang into a spot next to a Camaro, shut off the engine, then turned to Lisa.
    “Maybe we oughta just go on home,” he suggested, but Lisa grinned and shook her head.
    “I want to see it. Come on—just for a little while.” She got out of the car, and after a second’s hesitation, Alex joined her. A moment later Kate and Bob appeared out of the darkness, and