The 9th Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

face. Thirteen now, he was looking more and more like his father—blue eyes full of mischief, blond hair full of cowlicks, and a crooked grin that could stop a girl’s heart. Unlike Speed, he was loyal to a fault.
    “What about Kyle? What time did he get home from his party?”
    Marysue frowned. “A little after ten. I don’t think he had a very good time. He came in and went straight up to his room.”
    Liska sighed. Kyle was fifteen, quiet, too sensitive, internalizing everything and giving nothing away. He had broken up with his first girlfriend before Nikki had even known he had one. And she might never have known if she hadn’t had to dig through the trash for a permission slip R.J. had accidentally thrown away. Only then had she found the torn photograph of Kyle with a pretty, smiling blond-haired girl. When she had tried to broach the subject with him, he had gone within himself and slammed the door shut.
    She worried about him in a way she didn’t worry about her youngest. When R.J. got in trouble, it was right out there for all the world to see. In fact, he was usually the first one to tell her about it. And R.J.’s trouble was the obvious kind. He threw a baseball and accidentally busted a car window. He got sent to the principal’s office for making farting noises with his armpit during class. A bully picked on a friend after school, and he kicked the bully’s ass.
    Kyle was another matter. Bright and artistic, he had won a scholarship to the Performance Scholastic Institute, a prestigious private school for academically and artistically gifted students Nikki would never have been able to afford to send him to otherwise. His acceptance to PSI had helped prompt her to make the move from St. Paul.
    The school had seemed a perfect fit for him the first year. He had welcomed the academic challenge and thrived in his art classes. The girlfriend had happened over the summer. Things had begun to slide ever so slightly downhill from there. His guidance counselor had felt a need to express concern at the fall parent-teacher conference. Kyle’s grades had slipped a bit. He had become uncommunicative with school staff and was having trouble getting along with some of the other students. He didn’t seem to have many close friends. He hadn’t done anything wrong, the counselor stressed. He wasn’t in any kind of trouble, and yet . . .
    Nikki’s worry was that, like the secret girlfriend, she would find out about Kyle’s trouble only after the disaster, when the only thing left to do was to sweep up the pieces and put them in the trash.
    Marysue pushed the throw aside and got up from the couch. There was barely a wrinkle in her chocolate brown velour tracksuit.
    “I’m going to make breakfast,” she announced. “How would you like your eggs?”
    “I think I’m out of eggs.”
    “I’m not. Come over and eat something before you crash. You’ll worry better with a little protein in you.”
    “Give me twenty minutes.”
    As Marysue went out the front door, Nikki trudged up the stairs to the second floor, fantasizing about a hot shower. R.J.’s bedroom door was ajar. He was sprawled sideways across his bed as if he had fallen there, dead, one arm hanging over the side. She slipped into the room and covered him with the Vikings blanket he had gotten for Christmas. She brushed her fingers over the back of his head and smiled. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He slept the sleep of the innocent and unworried. She envied him.
    Across the hall, the door to Kyle’s room was shut. The door was an amazing original work of art created by her son, a surreal, shadowed landscape in red, black, and white, with an elaborate, life-size Samurai warrior in the foreground, guarding the portal with a wicked sword raised above his head.
    Nikki tried to turn the knob. Locked. She stood there for a moment, not sure what to do or think. There were only two reasons to lock a door: to keep one’s self in and protected, and to