Castles Read Online Free PDF Page B

we'd spend together in the spotlight of John Q. Public would assure that in just a few years, we'd be married.
    He licked his lips. His pink tongue slid just over his chin.
    Grandma's voice careened through my head, bounced off my skull and echoed louder and louder. " The tongue of a man is like a snake's. "
    I blinked. I knew it was just a memory, a thought stuck in my head more likely than not brought out by the funeral so fresh in my mind. Still, her voice was unbelievably real.
    ". . . like a snake's."
    Damn it, Grandma. I shook my head and tried to concentrate on the beast in the jar, on the smell of Michael, on something other than Grandma. I didn't want to think such thoughts, especially right then.
    "You watch out for the tongue of a man."
    I shook my head again, trying to get her voice to settle down. It seemed relentless and chastising, like she stood right behind me, guiding my actions at that very moment. I looked at the jar and the dust eel inside. I looked up at Michael, still licking his lips with that tongue, that very tongue I was told to watch.
    I shut my eyes, as if doing so would help me block out her voice. Was she really right there, in the room? Was her ghost warning me? Or was she sitting in her castle in the sky, rocking away on her chair and yelling down from Heaven?
    I stood up from the table and backed away. Michael looked up at me, a puzzled look on his face.
    "What?"
    "Watch the tongue, Maggie."
    I shook my head and closed my eyes again. " No! "
    "What are you saying?"
    When I opened my eyes, Grandma was sitting in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, the afghan wrapped around her. She rocked back and forth, a stern look painted on her face.
    I backed up even further. I didn't notice that Michael had stood up as well and was trying to hold me, trying to put his arms around me like I was throwing a tantrum and needed to be calmed.
    " Watch ," Grandma said.
    I turned to face Michael. His eyes were wide open and I'm sure he was as scared as I was—not for the same reasons, though. He said words I couldn't hear, words that fell from his lips, formed by the interaction of his tongue and teeth. I watched the tongue move up and down, pull inside and disappear just to come back out again. It writhed, almost, like Grandma's snakes.
    "Calm down, Maggie." I finally heard Michael's voice, and it soothed, like a breath of reality in the surreal Hell I'd just found myself in. "I'll put the jar away."
    I stopped shaking and felt my body relax. On the table, I saw the dust eel stare at me. Michael let go of my arms and picked up the jar.
    "Don't," I whispered. I didn't know what I was going to say after that or why I wanted him to keep the jar out. I looked in the corner of the room where I'd seen Grandma, only to find a broom and dustpan. Reality was a lot kinder than whatever my mind had just conjured up as a replacement.
    I gathered my wits about me and sat back down at the table, a little shaken but more at ease. "I want to see it again."

5
     
    Michael never told anyone about my outburst that day, and I never mentioned it again. I don't know what he thought—I was afraid of the dust eel in the jar, I was stricken with grief over Grandma's passing, I was just a crazy girl with a few screws loose. I didn't tell him that I'd heard Grandma's voice and saw her in the corner of the kitchen. If I had, I'm sure he would have been convinced I was insane and would never have kissed me behind the maintenance shed a few days later.
    I slept that night with thoughts of Michael running through my head. I had fallen for him, and wondered if I'd really fallen for him long before that. I'd always considered him to be my best friend, especially since girls rarely played with me, and none of the other boys paid much attention to my blossoming figure. We shared something that no one else knew about—a secret we could keep from Justin and Cade, a secret stashed in our minds that only we could talk about. There were other