Fault Lines by Brenda Ortega

Author:Brenda Ortega
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-04-22T23:00:00+00:00

then

the bonfire was just beginning

The morning after the bonfire, I found out the truth about Mike and Taylor. He was shut in his bedroom with the hip-hop music cranked. I banged on the door, and he turned the volume down before opening up.

“I heard something unbelievable about you and Taylor,” I said, looking into his blank eyes, desperate to see the answer I wanted. “You two aren’t going out, are you?”

He leaned into his door frame. “None of your business. Just leave her alone. I heard what you did, and you better lay off.”

“Did you hear what she said to Justine?”

“Yeah, I heard she made a joke, and you flipped out like a psycho. And if it happens again, you’ll answer to me.”

Me, answer? “And who’ll you answer to? For selling your soul?” I said.

He slammed the door in my face but then flung it open again. “Oh, and lose Todd Gurganus. Trust me, he’s not your BFF.”

I walked away. “Save it for someone who cares.”

We must’ve torn a page from Mom and Dad’s book, because we went from screaming at each other to ignoring each other’s existence completely – with the smoldering silence destroying as much as the shouting.

The only good thing to happen that week was watching Taylor drop out of drama club. She didn’t get a part in A Thousand Cranes, and she made a big dramatic scene of announcing she didn’t want to work offstage. Best news ever.

The less great news: I got the Grandmother part, and my ex-bestie Maddy Miskowski got Sadako. That meant we’d be spending lots of time together in rehearsals, and we’d even be forced to hold hands at one point during the play.

Plus Ricky York got his little speaking part, and he didn’t improve at all during lunchtime read-throughs.

At the end of the week, Dad had scheduled our first “visit” with him for all day Saturday and part of Sunday. Mike wasn’t going – had some football excuse – so it was just me and Bobby.

It all made me prime to go after Creeper. Todd and Derek and me planned it out for Friday night. We all did it that first time when he wasn’t home, with just soap and eggs, but I made sure to get all my aggression out on those windows so they were completely covered.

The next morning Mom backed out of the driveway real slow, watching Creeper on a ladder with a hose and bucket cleaning up the dried gunk.

“Someone vandalized Mr. Reiber’s house,” Mom said as she turned the car into the road and shifted into drive. “How terrible.”

She didn’t say anything else for the ten-minute drive to Grandma’s. She stared out the windshield with a glazed auto-pilot look.

Grandma and Dad acted happy when Mom dropped us off. Grandma’s apartment door flew open and they came out all smiles like they hadn’t seen us in ten years and we’d just crossed the ocean in a row boat to get there.

I plopped on the couch and flicked on the TV.

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