The Party Read Online Free PDF

wash away her work, near Easter, it had been with a heavy heart. But by then he’d had something greater than her pictures to enjoy. He had Alice herself, as both a regular visitor and a good friend. She was a true gift of holiday magic. She had charm and grace, kindness and wit.
    She was everything he had imagined his little sister would have been.
    Michael’s mother was only seventeen and in high school when she had given birth to him. Old man Jerry Olson split for parts unknown five years after that—Michael still had a few clear memories of his dad—and since then his mother had dated a seemingly endless succession of men. Two years ago one of them had gotten her pregnant. The guy had had no wish to marry her—he, too, would eventually disappear—and his mother had vacillated about having an abortion. Finally, over Michael’s bitter protests, she had decided on the operation—sort of late. He did not understand why the doctor had told his mom it had been a girl, or why she had told him.
    By a strange quirk of fate, he’d always thought of his unborn sister as Alice . After the incident, he often dreamed of what she would have been like. His little Alice. He still loved his mother more than anyone, but he doubted he’d ever totally forgive her for what she had done.
    But now, with Alice McCoy here to see him, it was easy to pretend what had gone before had been only a bad dream.
    “What am I doing? I’m cutting, just like you,” she said, releasing him and walking around the room, lightly tapping the keyboards on Tabb’s brandnew PCs, touching a printout page. Like a perpetually curious child, Alice was fascinated with everything around her.
    “You have an art class now, right?”
    “Yeah, I’m supposed to be at the park across the street studying tree branches. But they’ve just sprayed there with an awfulsmelling insecticide.” She giggled. “I did start on this one sketch of a giant mosquito sucking the sap out of a tree. It was really gross.”
    “Can I see it?”
    “No.”
    “Did you throw it away?” She shook her head. “But I’m going to, right after I show it to Clark. It really is weird. I can’t believe I drew it.”
    “Clark’s your new boyfriend, isn’t he?”
    “He’s not that new. I see him a lot.”
    “I’d like to meet him. What’s he like?”
    Alice shrugged, tossing her bright head of hair. “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to tell you about a friend of mine I want you to meet. She’s from Mesa, like me. She’s really wonderful.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “I’m not going to tell you. I want to be the one to introduce you so that when you both fall in love, and get married later on, you’ll be able to look back and say it was I who made it all possible. Are you going to the game tonight?”
    “I’m going to try. I have to work, but I should be able to catch the second half.”
    “Could you get there at halftime? I could introduce you to her then.”
    Michael chuckled. He wasn’t really interested in Alice’s friend, not after meeting Jessica Hart, but he saw no harm in saying hello to the girl. “What’s wrong with today at lunch?”
    “I won’t be here. I have a doctor’s appointment.”
    He paused. “What for? I mean, are you sick?”
    Alice brushed aside the question. “It’s nothing, I just have to stop in.”
    “How are you going to get there? I could give you a ride.” For some reason, the thought of Alice going all alone to the doctor disturbed him. He knew she had no parents, and that her guardian aunt didn’t get out often.
    “I’m taking a taxi.”
    “They’re expensive.”
    “I have money. Don’t worry about it. Just be there tonight at halftime. I’ll get her to come.”
    “I’ll do my best,” he promised.
    She smiled. “Thanks, this means a lot to me. Oh, what’s that you have on your screen? It looks like a report card.”
    Michael explained how through the use of special codes—he didn’t say where they had