Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

cried when I felt his lips pressing down on mine

"Leave me alone! You don't love me like I want to be

loved, for what I am. You love me because my face is

like hers! Sometimes I hate my face!"

&n

bsp; He looked terribly wounded as he backed

toward the door. "I was only trying to comfort you,"

he said in a broken voice. "Don't turn it into something

ugly."

My fear that Carrie's leg would come out of the

cast shorter than the other proved groundless. In no

time at all after her leg was cut free from the plaster

she was walking around as good as ever.

As fall neared, Chris, Paul and I conferred and

decided that a public school where Carrie could come

home every afternoon would be best for her after all.

All she'd have to do was board a bus three blocks from

home; the same bus would bring her home at three in

the afternoon. In Paul's big homey kitchen she'd stay

with Henny while I attended ballet class.

Soon September was upon us again, then

November had gone by, and still Carrie hadn't made a

single friend. She wanted most desperately to belong,

but always she was an outsider. She wanted someone

as dear as a sister but she found only suspicion,

hostility and ridicule. It seemed Carrie would walk the

long halls of that elementary school forever before she

found a friend.

"Cathy," Carrie would tell me, "nobody likes

me." "They will. Sooner or later they will know how