The Marked Read Online Free PDF Page A

criticized her parents. She seemed to take their lack of interest in her as a point of pride.
    I grabbed my clothes up from the floor. I had no idea what to say to Catherine when she wasn’t insulting me or trying to make my life miserable. “I guess it’s good to be here, then?” I offered.
    “Right.” She turned to unlock her suitcase, carefully shielding the lock so I couldn’t see her combination, and then began to unpack her clothes. They emerged from her bag perfectly folded. There were four white shirts still in plastic bags and two pairs of navy pants that had tags dangling off the sides. This was astonishing to me. I had assumed Catherine dressed in a uniform because she had a lot of button-downs from her last school and didn’t want to bother buying new clothes. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might prefer to dress this way.
    I’d have given anything for the chance to buy new clothes. Grandma and I barely had money to pay the electric bill, so everything I wore came either from the secondhand store or Walmart.
    “How’d you get here before me, anyway?” Catherine asked. “I thought they didn’t let anyone come back last night.”
    I shifted uneasily. This was the question I had hoped no one would ask. They tried to disguise our participation in the Program by holding events like Initiation when the other students weren’t around. But it fell to us to come up with excuses to explain why we’d been at school. I had thought that because they ran the Silver Bullet at various times on this day, no one would notice when I arrived at school. I should have known that Catherine would notice—and be offended that I had gotten back to the room before she did.
    I gave her the story I’d practiced. “They asked a group of us to come back early for some extra classwork. I guess it was for people who are having trouble.”
    “Grades didn’t turn out like you expected?” she asked nastily.
    I nodded. Actually, I’d been pretty happy with my B’s. But my response seemed to satisfy Catherine. I sent up a silent prayer to Meredith and Virginia, and all the other sophomores, asking them to forgive me for painting them as failures, too.
    Before she could quiz me further, there was a knock at the door, and Esther and Hennie walked in together. A few paces from my bed, Hennie tripped over her own foot and tumbled on top of me with a giggle. Laughing, Esther dived onto the bed too, her cloud of hair surrounding us like a black fog.
    “What are you two doing here so early?” I said, as I squirmed my way out of the crush of bodies. “I didn’t expect to see you until the afternoon.”
    Esther sat up next to me. “Hennie stayed with me for the last couple of days. We figured you’d be here early, so we got on the first bus. Besides, my parents couldn’t wait to get rid of us. I called you last night to work out the details, but you didn’t answer your phone.”
    “I know, I’m sorry. My battery died.” I changed the subject as fast as I could. Luckily, they both started talking at the same time about how they had tried to make cookies to bring to school but burned them because they were also messing around on the Internet, and how they talked all night long until Esther’s mom came into their room at two in the morning and told them they were leaving at five to catch the bus and that they’d better be ready or she’d leave them in the parking lot, even if it was raining.
    Catherine made a sound of disgust and stomped out of the room.
    I grinned. “Thanks for arriving right in the nick of time. She’s even grumpier than usual.”
    Hennie stared thoughtfully at the doorway. “She doesn’t seem happy.”
    “She never seems happy, Hennie. Haven’t you noticed?”
    “Something happened over break.” Hennie smoothed her long brown hair around her shoulders. “Something’s upset her.”
    “You got all that from one little snort?” Esther asked.
    “She did mention that her parents were fighting a