Shades of Blue by Joyce Scarbrough

Author:Joyce Scarbrough [Scarbrough, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B015RRC48Q
Publisher: Blue Attitude Books
Published: 2015-10-04T23:00:00+00:00

***

When I woke up in the morning, Britney wasn’t beside me in the bed. At first I was afraid she’d run off in the middle of the night, but she came out of the bathroom as I got to the hall.

“Jeez, you’re dressed and everything,” I said. “How long you been up?”

She shrugged as she went back into my room. “I always wake up early. Besides, I figured you and your sister needed the bathroom.”

I walked over to the closet to get my school clothes. “I won’t be long. You can go on to the kitchen and eat if you don’t want to wait.”

She sat on the bed and shook her head. “I never eat breakfast.”

“Not even waffles? My mama always makes them on Tuesdays.” I put my shirt and jeans on the bed beside her and noticed she was looking kind of funny. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just don’t like waffles. I’ll wait in here ‘til you’re done.”

When I came back from the bathroom, she was lying on the bed with her eyes closed.

“You okay?” I asked.

She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. “Yeah, somebody kept me up late with a bunch of girl talk.”

“Sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

She nodded and picked up her bag. “I’m gonna take off.”

“Where are you going?”

I guess it came out kinda frantic, because she said, “Chill out. I’m just going to school.”

“Okay, good. Come on over when you get home this afternoon. You can ride to the hospital with me and Mama.”

“Okay, see ya.” She stopped in the doorway and turned around. “Hey, thanks for letting me stay with you. You’re not as bad as I thought, Josephine.”

I laughed. “Yeah, neither are you, Bertha.”

All day at school, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sam and wondering if his mama would wake up. I hated the thought of him being at the hospital all alone, but it was better than being there with Russ. Since Mrs. Hart hadn’t died from the overdose, I hoped maybe Russ would get spooked and take off before she could wake up and finger him.

Mama picked me up after school since Sam wasn’t there to walk home with me. When we got home, I went next door to get Britney, but nobody came to the door. The mailman was just pulling away from our mailbox, so I got the mail before I went inside. A fat envelope squeezed out of the stack as I walked up the porch steps, and I saw my name on it when I picked it up.

I stopped and stared at it, an unexplainable feeling of dread sprouting in my stomach and spreading to my spine. The envelope was hand-addressed to Miss Joanna Houston with no return address, and I could tell there was some kind of hard object inside that felt like it might be a key. Something told me I shouldn’t open it in front of Mama, so I stuck it inside the waist of my pants before going in the house.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.