She waited to see what I would say.

“Our bodies should mean more to us, don’t you think?” she added when I didn’t answer.

I saw how worried she was that she might have hurt my feelings, but I didn’t answer quickly, because one of the changes that was coming over me involved exactly that idea about sex. In the world I was entering, it seemed that most things I once considered mundane and ordinary suddenly had great value and importance, whether it was how I ate a sandwich, walked, or held a conversation. And certainly with whom I had sex. Mrs. Brittany and her staff were isolating every little thing I did and showing me how it could define me, express who I was, or, as Mrs. Pratt had put it, service me. Yes, Sheena, in all her innocence, was right. She didn’t need all my experience to sense what was instinctively true.

“Sex should be special. ‘Friends with benefits’ is not all it’s cracked up to be,” I told her.

Her eyes widened. After some of the things I had described myself doing, I understood why she was so surprised at this answer. “You really believe that?”

“I do now. It’s like my vision has cleared,” I told her. “When you put such little value on yourself, others will, too. And what about later, when you want it to be special, when you do find someone you love and respect? Won’t it be too late to be able to make him feel special or convince him you are special?”

She stared at me with her mouth slightly open.

“I know,” I said. “I know. Just listen to me. I can’t believe I’m saying these things, either. I sound like some jealous wallflower. My mother tried to instill these values in me, but I was always too stuck on myself to listen or care. I think I made love out of spite more than out of desire. Maybe that’s why, even now, I don’t have many great memories. In fact, I’d like to forget it all ever happened. I’d like to go to a clinic and get back my virginity. Too bad you can’t unring a bell.”

She laughed. “I love listening to you, Roxy. You make me feel . . . okay, like I haven’t missed all that much and shouldn’t feel so sorry for myself.”

“I can tell you this, Sheena. The only thing I’m freely giving away from now on is advice, and even that will sometimes cost something.”

She laughed again and said, “I’d better go and let you get some good sleep. You have a lot to do tomorrow. Don’t forget your horseback riding. You’ll need your energy and strength. The horse doesn’t do all the work. Go on, get to bed. I feel responsible for you now.” She concluded sounding like my older sister or even my mother. After she closed the door, I had the best laugh I’d had in days and the best night’s sleep, too. And she was right. It was important that I did.

She was there at the riding stable already saddled and waiting the following day. Brendon Walsh was a short, slim man, not quite as small as a racetrack jockey but not much taller or heavier. He had curly red hair and freckles sprinkled over his cheeks and forehead like flecks of red pepper. He was very serious about his instructions but patient with me.

I felt a little silly in the riding outfit Mrs. Pratt had sent up for me. Sheena was wearing a similar one, but she looked very good in it. I could see the confidence in her face as she sat waiting on her horse. One of the things she had told me the night before was that horseback riding made her feel complete.

“The horse and I become one,” she had said. “I have healthy legs again. But every good rider feels that way about it. Brendon says that’s when you know you are comfortable in the saddle and, more important, when the horse is comfortable with you there.”

I had no idea what she meant when I first began, but it wasn’t long before I did.

Lance had been right about the new muscles I would be exercising, too. They let me know the next morning, but Brendon told me I couldn’t stop just because of some aches and pains. He wanted me riding every other day. Sheena was delighted, and by the e

nd of the week, I was doing well enough for the two of us to take a long ride through trails they had developed on the property. I never truly understood how large a tract of land Mrs. Brittany owned until we rode horses from one end of it to the other.

We talked a great deal during the rides. Sheena felt confident enough with me now to describe what her life had been like with her parents. As I listened, I couldn’t believe a mother could be so indifferent to her child’s pain and illness. Sheena tried to excuse it all by blaming her mother’s binge drinking and her father’s anger about that. I understood that she didn’t want to believe her mother could care so little about what she was enduring or that her father was blind to what was happening to her. Into this scene she described came Mrs. Brittany, who, from the way Sheena described her, swept in quickly to take complete control once she understood what was happening.

“It was the first time I saw my grandmother act like a powerful queen.”

“So you never hear from your parents?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I think about them often, though,” she confessed. When I was silent, she added, “But I am glad for my grandmother.”

“Hearing what you’ve told me, I think I might be almost as glad for her as you are,” I said, and she smiled.

“I hope that when you go to work for her, Roxy, you’ll still remember me.”

“Of course I will. And you’ll visit me wherever I am.”

“Will I?”

Maybe I shouldn’t be making promises without first checking them out with Mrs. Brittany, I thought.

“Let’s only think of good things for ourselves now,” I told her as a way of assuring her.

She nodded, and we rode on, both captured for the moment by our own fear of what tomorrow would actually bring.

In the days that followed, with Mrs. Brittany’s blessing, Sheena and I did draw as close as sisters. Just about every novel Professor Marx insisted I read, she had read and was ready to discuss. That also included plays. She was really a very bright student and expressed so much joy in sharing her knowledge that I couldn’t help but want to learn and understand. What a student I might have been if I had been friends with her while I was going to school, I thought.

We had been permitted to go out to dinner, and Mrs. Brittany promised her we would be able to go to a movie together very soon. Although it was true that because of my companionship, she took on a new glow and joie de vivre, I was getting almost as much out of it as she was. For the first time in my life, I had a real friend.

Tags: V.C. Andrews The Forbidden Horror
Source: readsnovelonline.net