Stalker Girl by Rosemary Graham

Author:Rosemary Graham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

13

STONY HOLLOW was good for Jess. During mealtimes, whenever Carly would peek out through the conveyor-belt window, she’d see her little sister in the middle of a group of girls, laughing or singing or engaged in one of those endless clapping games that seven-year-olds do obsessively. Sometimes Jess would sneak back into the kitchen to exchange hugs with Carly and play around with Brian, Liam, and Avery, who doted on her. If Kevin wasn’t around, they’d let her stand on a stool and rinse things with the overhead power washer—which, because she didn’t have to do it for hours a day, she found fun. One night Liam and Avery enlisted her help in building a giant pyramid of plastic cups then knocking it to the floor.

She liked horseback riding and, unfortunately for Carly because she had to watch what she said about Cameron Foster, sailing. But of course drama was her favorite activity. She played the Undersecretary of Understanding in The Phantom Tollbooth and stole the show—in Carly’s opinion—during the Parents’ Weekend production.

Nick came up for that weekend, which was tense. He and Isabelle were stiff and awkward with each other, while pretending to be great friends. Carly just felt weird. She introduced him to Brian, and the three of them sat together for Jess’s play on Saturday night, but what conversation they had never moved beyond small talk.

All summer she’d been thinking about how well Nick and Brian would get along, how much she was sure Nick would love Brian’s music. She’d imagined taking Nick back to Ernestine’s so he could hear the guys rehearse and see the cool old house. But when they were both there, sitting on either side of her, there didn’t seem to be any point to trying to connect them when Carly’s own connection to Nick was so uncertain.

Nick made an effort. He invited her and Brian to join him and Jess for dinner the next day. The kitchen crew always got Sunday afternoons and evenings off. Usually the camp bought pizza from a place in town, and the campers ate dinner in the sheltered annex down by the lake, but since it was Parents’ Weekend, some families were going into town for dinner.

“Invite Brian, too,” Nick said. “He can tell us where to go, and I can hear more about the band.”

But Carly said no. Brian had told her he had a surprise planned for that afternoon, and she’d been invited for dinner at Ernestine’s afterward. She knew that all she had to do was ask and Sheryl would insist that Nick and Jess come along. But Carly was surprised to find that she didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to share Sheryl and Brian and the Quinn clan with her falling-apart family. She wanted them all to herself.

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.