Red Velvet Crush Read Online Free PDF Page A

feet on the dash, stacking schoolbooks as we swerve into the student lot every morning, digging for a pen in the glove box if we need a note for being late. Not a single employee of our school district has seen my father’s signature since Winston started school. Billie has been forging it since she learned cursive writing.
    She does excellent harmony, too, never failing to join in—even for “Faith”—though she’s sung that one for me a billion times before.
    Things like that almost make me forget that she steals and lies and, not too long ago, cost me the only job I’ve ever had.
    I worked after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other Saturday morning last fall at Turner’s card shop downtown, selling cards and gifts and little figurines and other stuff that old ladies love.
    Lots of husbands dashed in, too, last minute, and bought whatever they could get their hands on. All I had to do was brush my hair and show up with a smile. The crystal vases and poem-filled cards practically sold themselves.
    Billie liked to stop by in the late afternoons and lean against the glass cases, spilling the news of the day and leavingfingerprints behind that I would have to clean as soon as she got bored and walked out the door.
    Turns out she was walking out the door with a few extra items, too. I honestly didn’t know, and I think Mrs. Turner believed my story, but she was unwilling to keep me on anyway.
    â€œI’m so sorry, Teddy Lee,” she said.
    She told me she wouldn’t press charges if Billie and I stayed away. Then she paid me, in cash, before locking the door behind me for the last time late on a cold Thursday night.
    Unable to look oncoming traffic in the eye, I slumped behind the wheel of my car all the way home. My little sister was a little thief. Sure, I had always known—there were way too many cheap wristwatches and lollipop wrappers on her dresser to ignore—but now somebody else knew, too.
    One of Billie’s secrets had spilled outside our house and splattered up onto my shoes. I stepped on the gas and squealed around the corner onto our street.
    â€œDamn it, Billie!” I yelled before the front door had a chance to bounce shut behind me. The living room was empty.
    Of course, I thought as I threw my bag into the corner of the couch, why would she be home? It was only a school night.
    I pushed our bedroom door open and pulled Billie’s secret shoebox out from under her bed. When I tore off the lid, everything inside sparkled in the light of her lamp.
    Billie had an entire collection of crystal creatures with Austrian gemlike eyes in there. Big sellers at the shop, they were expensive. She had every single one of them in that box. How hadn’t I noticed them trotting out the gift shop door?
    I sank down onto the rug, sorting through the tiny paws and cut-crystal manes. At the bottom of the box, wedged between a glass fawn and a glass pony, I found a small pink ballerina, wrapped up in its original tissue.
    That last Christmas before she bailed, my mom had given both of us, me and Billie, our own little music boxes. They were cheap dime-store things, made of paste and pressed paperboard covered in a spray of flowers with fake velvety linings.
    Billie flipped open the tinny gold latch on hers to reveal a dark purple inside and a blond ballerina twirling to“Send in the Clowns.” Mine was pink and played “Tiny Dancer.”
    My ballerina lasted only a couple of days. The tree was still up and balls of wadded wrapping paper still littered the living room floor when she snapped off at the toes, leaving behind a tiny boinging spring that rotated, dancerless, to mechanical Elton John music and a gold sticker that said MAY CONTAIN LEAD PAINT.
    I had wrapped her in Kleenex, whispered a made-up prayer, and laid her to rest in her pink velvet coffin, never to twirl again.
    Crossing my legs, I carefully unwrapped the tiny body. Ihadn’t