Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee by Mary G. Thompson

Author:Mary G. Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2016-09-23T11:41:26+00:00

We heard the door slam behind Kyle, but even then, I didn’t want to stand up. In case the man was still out there, in case there was any chance he’d see us. The first thing I saw was Kyle’s legs, the bottoms of his ratty brown cargo pants.

Lola let out a cry, and I began to breathe again.

But the man must be gone. The first person to ever come up here in close to two years, and we’d let him go. Stacie dropped my hands and stood up.

“I saw you looking out,” Kyle said, his voice whiny and high.

“I’ll take her,” Stacie said. I looked up and saw Stacie hold out her arms. Lola was still crying, flailing her little hands. I stood up, too, but Kyle didn’t look at me.

“You wanted to talk to him.”

“No, I didn’t,” Stacie said. Her voice was flat. “Just give me Lola so I can feed her.”

Kyle burst into tears. He pulled Lola closer, and she screeched.

“She’s just crying because she’s hungry,” I said. I could smell the chicken that I’d left on the stove burning. Kyle smelled it, too, and he headed for the stove, moving Lola to one arm. He turned the stove off, plucked the frying pan off the burner, and tossed the blackening chicken into the garbage.

“Stop crying,” he said to Lola, tears still streaming down his face. “Stop!”

Lola screamed harder.

“I can feed her,” Stacie said.

Kyle turned back toward us. His face was streaked with tears, but his eyes were hard. He cradled Lola with both arms again. “No one’s eating tonight. Not you, not Chelsea, not Lola. You’ve been bad.”

“She’s just a baby,” Stacie said.

“She looked at him, too,” Kyle said. “She made him ask questions.”

“She’s too young—”

“No.” He leaned down into Lola’s face. “You’ve been bad.”

Suddenly I remembered the day I told Stacie she was pregnant, how Kyle had been playing with that Barbie and saying he loved her, how he’d slammed the Barbie on the table. I stepped forward, reaching for Lola. “I’ll take her,” I said. “I won’t let Stacie feed her.” One more step and then another, and finally, I was close enough.

Kyle shoved Lola into my arms. He leaned against the kitchen counter. “You’re all bad,” he said.

We sat there for hours, with Kyle staring at us, afraid to move. I held Lola while she cried her lungs out. Stacie leaned against the window that we’d both wanted so badly to look out of, wanted so badly to use to signal that man. Later that night, when Kyle was finally asleep, she took Lola into the bathroom and fed her. And that wasn’t the last secret nighttime feeding. Even when the girls were too old to nurse, Kyle would sometimes take their food away. And we’d stash food together, hiding it in odd places like in the backs of high cupboards or underneath clothes. We’d take a little at a time so Kyle wouldn’t notice it was missing and then use it to feed the girls.

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