It didn’t surprise me that Count Piro’s older sister had become more like a mother to him. She and I were quite alike in that way. From what Grandpa was telling me, it was as if she had lost her parents completely and had no choice but to grow older faster.
Did she miss him as much as I missed Willie?
Wouldn’t she want him to be safe and happy?
Please, she would say, if she could call me, let him be your secret brother now.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I promise he will be.”
Pocket Books
proudly presents
Bittersweet
DREAMS
By V.C. Andrews®
Available October 2015 from Pocket Books
Turn the page for a preview of Bittersweet Dreams . . .
Prologue
Beverly Royal School System
18 Crown Jewel Road
Beverly Hills, California
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Cummings:
As you know, the school has been conducting IQ tests to better address the needs and placement of our students. We always suspected that we were going to get extraordinary results when Mayfair was tested, but no one fully understood or anticipated just how extraordinary these results would be.
To put it into perspective, this is a general scale by which most educational institutions judge these results.
IQ scores of 115 to 129 indicate a bright student who should do well with his or her educational pursuits.
We consider those with scores of 130 to 144 moderately gifted and those with 145 to 159 highly gifted. Anyone with scores between 160 and 179 is recognized as exceptionally gifted.
Rare are those whose scores reach 180. We consider such an individual profoundly gifted. To put it into even better perspective for you, statistically, these students are one in a million; so, for example, in the state of California, with a population of approximately 36 million, there are only eleven others who belong in this classification with Mayfair.
Needless to say, we’re all very excited about this, and I would like to invite you in to discuss Mayfair’s future, what to anticipate, and what to do to ensure her needs are fully addressed.
Sincerely yours,
Gloria Fishman, Psychologist
1
“For what you did, you belong in a juvenile home, maybe a mental clinic, but certainly not a new school where you’ll undoubtedly be coddled and further spoiled, an even more expensive private high school than Beverly Royal,” my father’s new wife, Julie, muttered bitterly.
Even though they had been married for years, I didn’t want to use the word stepmother, because it implied that she filled some motherly role in my life.
Her lips trembled as anger radiated through her face, tightening her cheeks. If she knew how much older it made her look, she would contain her rage. I did scare her once by telling her that grimacing too much hastened the coming of wrinkles.
It was the morning of what I thought would be my banishment from whatever family life I once could have claimed, something that had become a distant memory even before all this. I knew that few, least of all Julie, would think that mattered much to me. They saw me as someone who lived entirely within herself, like some creature who moved about in an impenetrable bubble, emerging only when it was absolutely necessary to say anything to anyone or do anything with anyone. But family did matter to me. It always had, and it always would.