Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“Come on—I don’t have all day,” she said and led me through the dark and dingy basement up a flight of stairs to the main part of the house.
The living area above couldn’t have been more different from the barn and the basement where I was expected to stay. The door at the top of the stairs led into a spotless kitchen with white marble floors and white granite countertops, veined with some golden stone which sparkled.
The enormous refrigerator was also spotless white as were the cabinets. There was a pantry door as well, which was open, showing a well stocked area filled with canned and dry goods. There was also every kind of snack food imaginable in there—sodas, chips, snack cakes, candy… My mouth watered when I saw the display.
But Nancy Spaulding seemed upset to find the door to the pantry open.
“Who did this?” she demanded, whirling on a small girl I hadn’t seen before—probably because she was standing quietly in the far corner, sweeping a minute amount of dust into a dustpan. “Minnie—did you do this? Have you been stealing food?” she shouted at the startled girl.
The girl, (whose real name was actually “Minh” I was to learn later,) flinched and shook her head, her long, straight black hair flying around her narrow face.
“No, Mrs. Spaulding!” she exclaimed in a small, thin voice like a sparrow chirping. “Miss Alexis came to get herself a snack but then she heard the new girl’s things were here so she went to look and forgot to relock it. I didn’t touch a thing in there—I swear!”
“Hmmph.” This answer seemed to satisfy Nancy Spaulding, for she took a final look around the well-stocked pantry before closing the door firmly. She produced a set of keys on one of those stretchy, elastic rings and locked the door, trying the knob twice to be sure it was secure.
I noticed there was a lock on the double doors of the vast white refrigerator too but it didn’t really register with me at that moment. I was too concerned with what Minnie had said about “the new girl’s things.” I was the new girl.
Suddenly, I wondered where in the world my two suitcases of clothes and my cardboard box of books and belongings, which had been in the back of the social worker’s car, had gone to.
I was soon to find out. After lecturing me about how there would be “no snacking between meals” and “no stealing food,” Nancy Spaulding marched me through the large formal dining room with its long, polished teakwood table and out to the living room.
There, sitting on a gold and white brocade couch, was a teenage girl with long, platinum blonde hair. She was about my size, though clearly quite a bit older than me. She had Nancy’s sharp, shrewish eyes and mouth and Gary’s long, narrow nose. Despite all that, she might have been pretty if not for the petulant, spoiled look on her face. Her thin upper lip was curled upward in a permanent expression of disgust, as though she was always just about to complain about something.
But at the moment, it wasn’t her face I was interested in—it was the fact that she had both my suitcases and my cardboard box open and was sifting through their contents.
“Hey!” I blurted, staring at her. “Those are my things!”
“Shut your mouth!” Nancy turned on me, quick as a snake, and slapped me hard across the face.
Tears of surprise and pain came to my eyes and I stumbled back from her feeling stunned. Auntie Amelia had never raised a hand to me the entire time I’d been in her home. Before that, my Mamma had tanned my bottom a time or two, but only when I’d really done something to deserve it. To be slapped out of the blue for nothing was a shock I was still trying to process.
“Did you find anything you can use, Princess?” Nancy Spaulding’s voice dropped to a caressing purr as she spoke to her daughter.
“Huh—most of this is cheap Walmart crap.” Alexis Spaulding’s thin upper lip curled even higher as she dug through my carefully folded clothes. She was picking them up and examining them before carelessly tossing them on the highly polished hardwood floor.
I felt my cheeks burn with anger and I curled my hands into fists at my sides. Auntie Amelia hadn’t had much money, though she was always scrupulous in using everything the Child Protective Services gave her every month on anything Becky and I had needed. Yes, we had gotten some of our clothes from Walmart but there were a few carefully chosen things that Auntie Amelia had given me as Christmas presents that I loved. None of it was “cheap crap” to me.
“Ugh—none of these clothes are any good!” Alexis Spaulding announced. “Let’s see what’s in here.”