"She gave you that?" Raspberry said, moving quickly to look at it. "That's a good watch, ain't it. Alanis?"

Alanis seized Stuart's arm and studied the watch,

"Maybe. Looks like it might be. Who knows what else is in this house?" she muttered at me. "It's crazy giving away stuff like that just for delivery of a gas tank."

"Maybe you should start working for my father." Stuart countered so quickly that it took all three of them and me by surprise. For a moment no one spoke. The girls held their half smiles ,

"Oh, that's funny, Stuart," Alanis finally said. Her face turned mean and ugly. "You must have done something extra for her to get those things, and anyway you shouldn't take things from her. She's not all there. She's bonkers. You should give it all back. Give it all to Jordan," she insisted.

He turned to me.

"If my great-aunt gave it to him, she wanted to give it to him," I said. "She'd be upset if I took it back."

Stuart smiled, and, surprisingly, so did Alanis.

"Well, you can see Jordan clearly likes vou. Stuart," she told him. "A girl like this needs someone big and strong like you to look after her, especially when she just starts in a new school. Ain't I right, girls?"

"Oh, yeah," Nikki said. "The creeps will be bothering her right off."

"She hasn't got anyone to protect her from the riffraff." Raspberry told him. "A girl looking that good is going to be annoyed all the time."

He looked at me and shrugged. "Sure, I'll be glad to help," he said.

"See?" Alanis said. "I told you Stuart was a nice boy. C'mon. You two sit here," she directed, taking me by the arm and moving me to the sofa. "Stuart, sit next to her." She sat him beside me. "You two get to know each other."

The three of them looked at us, all with silly smirks on their faces. then Alanis started to dance again and the other two joined her.

"I hear your teacher's Mrs. Morgan," Stuart said. "She can be damn mean sometimes, especially if she

catches you doing something while she's talking. And if you scratch your head too much, she'll send you to the nurse right away to have her check for lice. She says it so loud that everyone thinks you have lice even if the nurse says you don't. I don't," he emphasized.

"There was a girl in my class last year who had ringworm on her head and had to have her hair shaved," I told him.

"Ugh," he said and drank some more. "Don't you like yours?" he asked, nodding at the bottle in my hands. I looked at it and then took a sip. "Hey, sometimes, if I have my truck at school. I could maybe take you home and you won't have to ride the bus. You'll get home faster," he added when I didn't respond.

"I'll have to tell my great-aunt," I said.

"How long you been here already?"

"Just a few days."

"You like it?"

I shrugged. "It's all right," I said. "I have to get used to it."

"You got a nice little lake in the back. I once went fishing in it, but from the other side so no one knew. Didn't catch anything anyway," he added and sipped his drink.

"Stuart," Alanis said. "She looks cold. Why don't you at least put your arm around her?"

He stared at Alanis for a moment and then he looked at me. I started to say I wasn't cold, but he put his arm around my shoulders.

"Now that's nice," Nikki said. "See, you're protecting her already."

They didn't laugh, but I saw they were smiling and stuffing their giggles in their bloated cheeks.

"Take another sip of your alcopop,"' Alanis advised me and winked. "She's been to plenty parties. Stuart," she added. His eyes widened.

"I don't go to many parties," he told me. "I work a lot. I'm saving my money to get my own car. I could buy a used one right now, but I'm better off waiting until I can get a better one. The truck's okay for now."

Tags: V.C. Andrews Early Spring Horror
Source: readsnovelonline.net