Shocking Pink Read Online Free PDF

her face into her hands. “I feel so awful. I don’t know what to do.”
    Raven sat beside her, wrapping an arm protectively around Andie’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
    “How did you make it?” Andie asked brokenly. “After your mom took off, I mean. I feel like I’m going to die.”
    For a long moment, Raven was silent, as if lost in her own memories. Then she cleared her throat. “You know what I think? That parents suck. Especially fathers.”
    “I always thought I had the best family in the whole world. I never thought my dad could do—”
    “Anything wrong,” Raven supplied, and Andie nodded miserably. “You thought he was perfect. A hero, or something.”
    As she spoke, something crept into her friend’s voice, something mean. Something Andie didn’t recognize. Andie looked at her. “Rave?”
    Her friend met her eyes. “But he’s no hero, is he, Andie? He’s just another prick.”
    Andie looked away. It hurt to think of her dad that way. It hurt almost more than she could bear.
    “Let’s get Julie.”
    “Julie?”
    “Why not?” Raven smiled. “Screw ’em all. Let’s get out of here.”
    “But your leg. Can you, I mean, doesn’t it hurt?”
    Raven glanced down at the bandage and shrugged. “Yeah, it hurts. So what? Worst case, I blow out a few stitches.”
    Andie swallowed hard. “How many did you get?”
    “Twenty. Would have been less but the cut was so jagged. You should have seen my dad, he turned green and had to leave the room.” She shook her head. “I don’t get human nature. My dad turning green at that? My dad? Unbelievable.” She got to her feet and held out a hand. “Come on.”
    Andie shook her head. “You’re going to hurt yourself. I don’t want that.”
    “It’s for you, Andie. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter if I get hurt, not when it’s for you.”
    Andie agreed without saying a word. She didn’t have to ask where they would go after they collected their friend; she knew. To their place, the abandoned toolshed on the edge of one of farmer Trent’s fields. They had discovered it two summers ago and immediately claimed it as their special place. Small, dilapidated and smelling faintly of oil, they loved it. Because it was theirs. A place where they could be together and be themselves, away from prying parents and annoying siblings.
    Julie lived on Mockingbird Lane, three blocks behind Andie and Raven, in Phase II of Happy Hollow. The two girls wound their way across and around the streets and connecting yards without discovery. Not that there was too much chance of that, the streets were deserted, every house dark and locked up tight.
    Andie found the quiet unsettling. She moved her gaze over Julie’s street, taking in the row of houses with their unnaturally blank windows. Since R. H. Rawlings, a machine manufacturer and one of the town’s major employers, had closed six months before, about forty percent of the Phase II houses were for sale or rent and empty. Of the ten houses on Mockingbird Lane only three were occupied. Many of the empty homes were still owned by Sadler Construction, the builder. Andie had heard her father remark that it was a good thing the Sadlers had such deep pockets.
    “It’s kind of creepy,” Andie whispered. “I keep getting this feeling, like all the houses are watching us.”
    “They’re empty, Andie. Nobody lives in them, so how could they be watching?”
    She inched closer to Raven. “They’re supposed to be empty, but what if they’re not? I mean, it would be so easy for someone to hide in one of them.”
    “And do what? Jump out and grab some poor, unsuspecting teenager? I don’t think so.”
    Andie made a face at her friend’s sarcasm. “It could happen. Look at those houses at the end of the circle. There’s nothing behind them but old man Trent’s fields. And the one on the left’s bordered by a wooded lot.” Andie shuddered, imagining. “That doesn’t spook you at