Heart of the World Read Online Free PDF

perfect here, but if Paolina's playing some game with me, I don’t know the rules.”
    â€œSorry.”
    The phone rang and she took a minute to send cabs buzzing around the city. Then she said, “Roz is checking out more of her classmates over at Rindge.”
    â€œYeah, I’m going to meet her there later.”
    Roz, my tenant and assistant, a punk twenty-something, doesn’t look like a grown-up, so I’d decided she’d be the one to investigate Paolina's classmates, a non-threatening interrogator. She’d ferreted out the news that Diego had gone missing at the same time as Paolina. I’d fastened on that too quickly, leaped to the wrong conclusion.
    Gloria said, “None of my cabbies picked her up.”
    â€œWhat about other companies?”
    â€œI put the word out and sweetened it with a C-note. For a C-note, most cabbies will turn in their mothers, their sweethearts, and their best boyhood pals.”
    In other words, she hadn’t heard anything.
    â€œYou eat breakfast?”
    I shook my head impatiently.
    â€œYou gotta eat. Want a bite?”
    I considered the assortment of bags and jars on Gloria's desk. “What are these?”
    â€œThose? Sheer heaven. They’re like potato chips made outta chocolate.You know, I been complaining about a lack of imagination in the junk food industry for years, but now I take it all back.” She took a wavy dark shape from a can and used it to scoop up a gob of Marshmallow Fluff. “Strong enough for peanut butter,” she said admiringly.
    â€œDid you check the hospitals again?” I asked.
    She chewed, swallowed, and nodded.
    â€œNothing from the cops?” I was spinning my wheels; if Gloria had found any leads, she’d have gotten in touch. We both knew the drill. I hadn’t even tried to tell the Missing Persons detail in Cambridge that this was different, because up till now, I hadn’t felt it was different.
    Paolina hadn’t run off with Diego. A chasm had opened under my feet, and it seemed as though I couldn’t stop myself from falling, careening down a rabbit-hole Wonderland that wasn’t wonderful at all, that was scary and dark as a mine shaft.
    â€œYou got a last sighting yet?” Gloria's voice brought me back.
    â€œAurelia Gutierrez saw her Friday night at the Macys’ party, around eleven o’clock. Nobody saw her leave with anybody.”
    â€œBut she left.”
    â€œShe's not still there, Gloria, that's all I can say.”
    It was hurting Gloria, too. She’d never have left the last row of Fig Newtons in the bag if Paolina hadn’t been gone. I reached over and took one. It tasted like straw and I quickly swallowed some water from the cooler to wash it down.
    Steps out into the frigid night and disappears . It was like I could see the words in print, a huge black headline in a giant newspaper.
    My little sister is a street-smart girl. Central Square, where the Macy twins had held their party, is an urban center jammed with people. The party had broken up by one in the morning, and no one recalled seeing Paolina after 11:15. Eleven fifteen isn’t 3:00 A. M . Central Square is still active at midnight. The porch lights are on; the houses and apartments are close together and close to the street. If someone had attacked her on the street she’d have screamed and kicked up one hell of a fuss. She doesn’t get in cars with strangers. She doesn’t walk alone at night. She carries a whistle.
    God, I went over and over it in my head. You don’t just step out into the frigid night and disappear. She’d tried to run away before.
    Gloria said, “I read in one of my newspapers about all these Mexican girls got kidnapped as sex slaves.”
    She reads grocery-store tabloids, alternates them with romance magazines.
    â€œWho's on the airport?” I asked, hoping to avoid the sex-slave stories, aware that I’d known who went out