The Watcher in the Wall Read Online Free PDF Page B

bored out of his mind already, and he’d looked across the room and noticed the hole.
    It was about the size of a dime, belt-high, kind of ragged around the edges. He’d put down his sketch pad and climbed off the bed, crossed the little room and knelt at the hole, peered through, blinking a couple times to focus. And there she was, like his own private movie.
    Sarah was brushing her hair on the other side of that hole, primping and preening in a little mirror above her dresser, the sides of the frame all tacked over with pictures of teen idols and movie stars, the New Kids on the Block, Tom Cruise and Luke Perry. Sarah was wearing a pretty dress; she was singing to herself, singing along with the radio. The dress was light blue; her hair was honey blond.
    She was getting ready to go out. Gruber watched her brush her hair, watched her dance around her little bedroom. Watched her pause while fixing her makeup to stick another poster on the wall.
    He knelt at the hole, hardly daring to breathe. The hot, late-summer air suffocating, his shirt sticking to his skin, his whole body tense as he watched her. He was sure Sarah would notice him. Still, he couldn’t turn away.
    He’d been afraid to move out there. He’d been afraid of the meanness he’d seen in Earl’s eyes, when he’d come to call on Gruber’s mother. Gruber suspected that Earl would have left him behind if he could have. That he’d only agreed to move them both so that he could be closer to Gruber’s mom.
    But his new stepsister seemed
happy
. She looked radiant through that peephole, far too good for her bedroom, for that crummy trailer. Andwatching her, Gruber felt better. Maybe life with Earl wouldn’t be quite as bad as he’d imagined. Maybe he could survive there.
    He watched Sarah bop around her little room. Watched her put the finishing touches on her makeup and wondered where she was going. If she had friends in this dump of a trailer park—a “motor court,” they called it, as if a fancy name could hide the sorry state of the place. He wondered if they would share the same friends. They weren’t so far apart in age after all.
    The thought buoyed him. He hadn’t had many friends back in the city. The kids who’d known him in school had made fun of his soda-bottle glasses, the way he lisped when he talked. They’d left him alone, on his good days. On the bad days, they hadn’t. But maybe here would be different. Maybe everything would finally be all right.
    •   •   •
    All too quickly, the illusion shattered. Gruber was watching Sarah buckle her shoes when, behind him, Earl pushed open the door. Barged into the little bedroom; didn’t bother to knock. Just walked in and waited for Gruber to notice.
    Gruber scrambled up from the floor. Prayed Earl hadn’t seen the hole. Prayed he wouldn’t think to ask why his new stepson was kneeling at the wall. But Earl didn’t notice. He fixed Gruber with a hard stare, didn’t bother to hide his distaste.
    “Live in my house, you’ve got to earn your keep,” he said, and there was a menace to his tone. “There’s a pile of junk and old scrap out back. Get on out there and move it.”
    The whole trailer seemed to still, waiting on Gruber’s response. He couldn’t even hear Sarah in the next room, or her music anymore. Earl’seyes narrowed, and his fists clenched. “Don’t make me ask you twice,” he said.
    Gruber glanced back at that hole in the wall. Knew Earl was waiting, itching for an excuse. And as he followed his new stepfather out through the shitty double-wide to the gravel-patch yard, the stench of cheap bourbon lingering in the warm air, Gruber knew he’d been wrong to put faith in what he’d seen through the wall, foolish to believe it had any bearing whatsoever on his own life in Earl’s trailer.
    < 14 >
    Windermere stayed up late. Sat in her living room and drank beer in near darkness, thinking about Ashley Frey, in the dim light from the kitchen and the glow of