“Yes, they’re—” Andie struggled to find her voice. “My dad’s … he’s leaving us.”
Raven leaned farther out the window. “Hold on,” she whispered, the breeze catching her white-blond hair and blowing it across her face. She swept it back. “I’ll be right down.”
A couple minutes later she emerged from the house, fully dressed. She came to Andie and put her arms around her. “Oh, Andie. I can’t believe it.”
Andie pressed her face to her best friend’s shoulder for a moment, clinging to her. “Believe it. He called us all together for this bogus meeting about how much he still loves us and everything.”
She wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand. “Then I heard the whole truth later. He’s been screwing around on my mom.”
Raven gasped. “Not your dad!”
“With his secretary.”
“That perky little bimbo? She’s … she’s like a Barbie doll. Your mom’s way better than her.”
Andie sank to the ground and dropped her face into her hands. “I feel so awful. I don’t know what to do.”
Raven sat beside her, wrapping an arm protectively around Andie’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
“How did you make it?” Andie asked brokenly. “After your mom took off, I mean. I feel like I’m going to die.”
For a long moment, Raven was silent, as if lost in her own memories. Then she cleared her throat. “You know what I think? That parents suck. Especially fathers.”
“I always thought I had the best family in the whole world. I never thought my dad could do—”
“Anything wrong,” Raven supplied, and Andie nodded miserably. “You thought he was perfect. A hero, or something.”
As she spoke, something crept into her friend’s voice, something mean. Something Andie didn’t recognize. Andie looked at her. “Rave?”
Her friend met her eyes. “But he’s no hero, is he, Andie? He’s just another prick.”
Andie looked away. It hurt to think of her dad that way. It hurt almost more than she could bear.
“Let’s get Julie.”
“Julie?”
“Why not?” Raven smiled. “Screw ’em all. Let’s get out of here.”
“But your leg. Can you, I mean, doesn’t it hurt?”
Raven glanced down at the bandage and shrugged. “Yeah, it hurts. So what? Worst case, I blow out a few stitches.”
Andie swallowed hard. “How many did you get?”
“Twenty. Would have been less but the cut was so jagged. You should have seen my dad, he turned green and had to leave the room.” She shook her head. “I don’t get human nature. My dad turning green at that? My dad? Unbelievable.” She got to her feet and held out a hand. “Come on.”
Andie shook her head. “You’re going to hurt yourself. I don’t want that.”
“It’s for you, Andie. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter if I get hurt, not when it’s for you.”
Andie agreed without saying a word. She didn’t have to ask where they would go after they collected their friend; she knew. To their place, the abandoned toolshed on the edge of one of farmer Trent’s fields. They had discovered it two summers ago and immediately claimed it as their special place. Small, dilapidated and smelling faintly of oil, they loved it. Because it was theirs. A place where they could be together and be themselves, away from prying parents and annoying siblings.
Julie lived on Mockingbird Lane, three blocks behind Andie and Raven, in Phase II of Happy Hollow. The two girls wound their way across and around the streets and connecting yards without discovery. Not that there was too much chance of that, the streets were deserted, every house dark and locked up tight.
Andie found the quiet unsettling. She moved her gaze over Julie’s street, taking in the row of houses with their unnaturally blank windows. Since R. H. Rawlings, a machine manufacturer and one of the town’s major employers, had closed six months before, about forty percent of the Phase II houses were for sale or rent and empty. Of the ten houses on Mockingbird Lane only three were occupied. Many of the empty homes were still owned by Sadler Construction, the builder. Andie had heard her father remark that it was a good thing the Sadlers had such deep pockets.
“It’s kind of creepy,” Andie whispered. “I keep getting this feeling, like all the houses are watching us.”
“They’re empty, Andie. Nobody lives in them, so how could they be watching?”
She inched closer to Raven. “They’re supposed to be empty, but what if they’re not? I mean, it would be so easy for someone to hide in one of them.”
“And do what? Jump out and grab some poor, unsuspecting teenager? I don’t think so.”
Andie made a face at her friend’s sarcasm. “It could happen. Look at those houses at the end of the circle. There’s nothing behind them but old man Trent’s fields. And the one on the left’s bordered by a wooded lot.” Andie shuddered, imagining. “That doesn’t spook you at all?”
“Nope.” Raven shook her head. “I like that they’re empty. There’s no nosy old busybody peering out her window at us, scolding us for crossing her yard and threatening to call our parents. I wish they were all empty.”
They reached Julie’s house, a beige-colored two-story with dark blue shutters, and went around to the rear. Their friend’s bedroom was on the second floor, in back. Luckily, her parents’ bedroom was on the other side of the house.
They had done this before, though they didn’t push their luck. Of all their parents, Julie’s father was the toughest. He believed in punishment as a daily cleansing ritual. It didn’t matter what Julie did, she always did wrong. He made it clear she always let him down.
When she really did let him down, he made his daughter pay in ways that scared Andie. Forcing his daughter to stay on her knees for hours reading the Scriptures, humiliating her publicly, controlling her in ways that went way beyond what any other parents did.
Andie was of the opinion that the Good Reverend Cooper, as she and Raven called him, was obsessed with sin and sinfulness, and that he kind of got off on it. It didn’t help that Julie looked more like a Playboy magazine centerfold than a regular fifteen-year-old. Andie also thought he was a complete A-hole and that Julie deserved lots better than him for a father. She only wished Julie thought so, too.
Raven scooped up some gravel and threw a few pieces at a time at Julie’s window. Within moments, Julie appeared. She saw it was them and raised the window and unlatched the screen.
“What are you guys doing here?” she whispered, then glanced nervously over her shoulder.
Raven grinned. “Come down and find out.”
“I don’t know.” Julie looked over her shoulder again, then back at them. “Dad was pretty suspicious tonight. After you guys left, he asked me lots of questions about how you got hurt. Then we had to pray for purity and forgiveness.” She lifted the screen higher and leaned her face out, squinting without her glasses. “How’s your leg?”
“Hurts. It’s no big deal.”
“She got twenty stitches,” Andie said.
“Twenty?” Julie’s eyes widened. “Oh, Rave.”
“Forget my leg, okay? Come on down.” Raven stuck her hands in her back pockets. “Your dad’s going to beat your ass even if you don’t come. He’ll find some reason, you know