Sunset Terrace by Rebecca Donner

Author:Rebecca Donner [Donner, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59692-883-1
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2003-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Broke Bone

After her mother left for the PWP dinner, Hannah ran down the stairs to Bridget’s apartment.

Pressing her ear against the front door, she could hear the TV inside: the volume low, a sudden burst of tinny laughter. She tiptoed under the living room window—shut tight as it always was whenever Joan wasn’t leaning out it smoking—and tried peeping through the thin opening in the curtains.

Who was in there? she wondered, half-hoping to see Bridget tied to a chair with a thick rope, a strip of silver tape over her mouth. She would rescue Bridget! Wait for Joan to leave for Culver City, then come crashing through the window in a magnificent shatter of glass. She’d use one of the shards to expertly cut the rope off, and the relief and admiration in Bridget’s brimming eyes would never leave.

Hannah squinted, trying to make out in the shadows a chair, a girl, a rope. But she saw no one: the room was empty and dark, except for the blue flicker of the TV.

She tiptoed away from the window and ran around the building to the parking lot in back. Looking up at the row of storage cabinets, she remembered Bridget’s hiding place. Hannah jumped up, trying to reach the cabinet’s rusted handle to open the door, but it was too high.

“Bridget!”

No response. “Bridget!” she whispered once more.

Again, she pictured a chair, a rope. Maybe Bridget was in her bedroom. She ran up the asphalt driveway and stopped in front of Bridget’s bedroom window. Here, just like the living room, the curtains were drawn, the room dark; no sign Bridget was in there.

Hannah tapped the glass anyway.

A meaty hand swooped the curtain back. A pair of glassy, bloodshot eyes appeared.

She jumped back, losing her balance on the loose gravel. Her palm hit the ground first, a sideways slap and skid that broke her fall but sent needles of pain up her arm. Behind the windowpane, he was laughing, looking down at her.

It was Ned, she saw. Only Ned.

The pain in her arm sharpened, coming on in full force now that her fear was gone. A rustle of curtains and a teenage girl’s face appeared next to Ned’s, her black eyeliner smudged, her eyes glassy and red-veined, too. The girl blew out a cloud of smoke and smiled down at Hannah, revealing the silver glint of a retainer.

Diane, she thought. Ned’s girlfriend.

Then the faces disappeared. The curtain swung shut, but not before Hannah got a peep into the room: the bed in the wrong place, by the window, and a Van Halen poster on the wall. She realized her mistake: it was Ned’s room, not Bridget’s. She looked down the side of the building, where the windows of people’s bedrooms—all sooty and small and covered with the same yellowish-white curtains—were lined up in a row. Bridget’s was the next one over, the room also dark. She tapped on the window, but the curtain stayed motionless.

Hannah climbed the chain-link fence and straddled it, the way she’d seen Bridget do.

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