Hide and Seek Read Online Free PDF Page A

lifted him out from the box and studied his face. For a Santa, it was a little creepy. He had one bright blue eye, and the other was a cloudy green. He reminded her of a gypsy fortune teller she’d seen in a television show.
    As odd looking as his eyes were, he was Santa Claus, and she knew right where he belonged. Agatha carried him over to the plank where his reindeer were standing and tried to fit him into the wooden sleigh. No matter how she tried to jam his legs into it, he just wouldn’t stay when she let him go. He kept falling over, and on the third try he took the sleigh with him.
    Agatha sighed. “Okay, so you won’t fit. Well, instead of delivering presents, you can be my friend. Isn’t it nice up here?”
    She nodded the doll’s head so that he appeared to be agreeing with her. His porcelain face was smudged with dirt and dust, and Agatha frowned at him.
    “That’s no way for Santa to look,” she said, rubbing his face with one hand. The porcelain was stubborn, and she had to lick her thumb and scrub vigorously with her sweater sleeve to get it to come clean. After a few minutes, Santa’s face shone in the twinkling red and green lights.
    “Much better.”
    Agatha stared into the mismatched eyes of the doll. The last time she’d seen Santa, it had been at the mall the Christmas before. She’d sat on his lap, and instead of wishing for a bicycle or a Cabbage Patch doll, she’d asked him to help her mother find a nice man because she was lonely and had to work too many hours at the hospital. One month later, her mom met Frank, and now Agatha was locked in an attic by his awful daughters.
    “Be careful what you wish for, I guess,” she muttered.
    She wanted a do-over. She shouldn’t have been so vague the last time she’d asked Santa for something. That’s what had gotten her into trouble. This doll wasn’t large enough for her to sit on its lap, but she could reverse the order. It would probably work just as well. She sat down on the plank and settled the doll on her legs, facing her, and held his cold little hands in her own. She closed her eyes and tried to think of the perfect way to ask for what she really wanted this Christmas.
    “I just wish Summer and Rain would leave me alone,” she whispered. “My life was so much better without them. I wish that they can never hurt me again.”
    Agatha felt a pang in her belly and opened her eyes. The doll was staring straight back at her with blank, glassy eyes. She hoped that the real Santa could hear her wish, wherever he was.
    A sudden movement from the far corner of the attic made Agatha jump to her feet. Something darted down from the rafters and sailed toward her face.
    A bat!
    Agatha screeched and tried to flee, tripping over a string of Christmas lights in the process. She scrambled to her hands and knees, darting her eyes around the attic and searching for the creature. After several seconds, she found it perched on the vent, staring back at her with its head cocked to one side.
    It was a starling. A tiny, harmless starling. Agatha let out a great rush of breath, and her heart pounded in her chest. The sudden burst of adrenaline made her stomach hurt, and she remembered how hungry she was. There was nothing to eat up here though. At least nothing she’d want to try. There could be something in one of these old boxes, but not even chocolate lasted that long.
    Hunger gnawed at her, and she felt exhausted. This wasn’t how Christmas Eve was supposed to feel. She was supposed to be warm and merry and comfortable. This was the day for eating cookies in front of a roaring fire. It wasn’t supposed to be a long battle with her stepsisters that ended with her getting locked up in an attic with nothing but an old doll to keep her company. She wanted to go to sleep and wake up when her mom got home, and then the real Christmas Eve could begin.
    Agatha stretched out onto the wooden plank beside the reindeer. She reached out a hand and righted the