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Are You Afraid Of The Dark :: Sheldon Sidney
Страница: 26 из 173I can't spend the rest of my days scrubbing toilets and mopping floors and cleaning up after messy strangers.
And one day Kelly found her magic rabbit hole. It was her imagination, which would take her anywhere she wanted to go. She rewrote her life…
She had a father, and her mother and father were the same color. They never got angry and yelled at her. They all lived in a beautiful home. Her mother and father loved her. Her mother and father loved her. Her mother and father loved her…
* * *
WHEN KELLY WAS fourteen, her mother married one of the boarders, a bartender named Dan Berke, a surly, middle-aged man who was negative about everything. Kelly could do nothing to please him.
"The dinner is lousy…" "That dress is the wrong color for you…" "The shade in the bedroom is still broken. I told you to fix it…" "You haven't finished cleaning the bathrooms…" Kelly's stepfather had a drinking problem. The wall between Kelly's bedroom and her mother and stepfather's bedroom was thin, and night after night, Kelly could hear the sounds of blows and screams. In the morning, Ethel would appear wearing heavy makeup that failed to cover bruises and black eyes.
Kelly was devastated. We should get out of here, she thought. My mother and I love each other.
One night, when Kelly was half asleep, she heard loud voices from the next room.
"Why didn't you get rid of the kid before she was born?" "I tried to, Dan. It didn't work." Kelly felt as though she had been kicked in the gut. Her mother had never wanted her. No one wanted her.
* * *
KELLY FOUND ANOTHER escape from the unending dreariness of her life: the world of books. She became an insatiable reader and spent as much of her spare time as she could at the public library.
At the end of the week, there was never any money left for Kelly, so she got a job as a babysitter, envying the happy families she would never have.
* * *
AT SEVENTEEN, KELLY was developing into the beauty her mother had once been. The boys at school began asking her for dates. She was repelled. She turned them all down.
Saturdays, when there was no school and Kelly's chores were finished, she would hurry to the public library and spend the afternoon reading.
Lisa Marie Houston, the librarian, was an intelligent, sympathetic woman with a quiet, friendly manner and whose clothes were as unpretentious as her personality. Seeing Kelly in the library so often, Mrs. Houston became curious.
And one day Kelly found her magic rabbit hole. It was her imagination, which would take her anywhere she wanted to go. She rewrote her life…
She had a father, and her mother and father were the same color. They never got angry and yelled at her. They all lived in a beautiful home. Her mother and father loved her. Her mother and father loved her. Her mother and father loved her…
* * *
WHEN KELLY WAS fourteen, her mother married one of the boarders, a bartender named Dan Berke, a surly, middle-aged man who was negative about everything. Kelly could do nothing to please him.
"The dinner is lousy…" "That dress is the wrong color for you…" "The shade in the bedroom is still broken. I told you to fix it…" "You haven't finished cleaning the bathrooms…" Kelly's stepfather had a drinking problem. The wall between Kelly's bedroom and her mother and stepfather's bedroom was thin, and night after night, Kelly could hear the sounds of blows and screams. In the morning, Ethel would appear wearing heavy makeup that failed to cover bruises and black eyes.
Kelly was devastated. We should get out of here, she thought. My mother and I love each other.
One night, when Kelly was half asleep, she heard loud voices from the next room.
"Why didn't you get rid of the kid before she was born?" "I tried to, Dan. It didn't work." Kelly felt as though she had been kicked in the gut. Her mother had never wanted her. No one wanted her.
* * *
KELLY FOUND ANOTHER escape from the unending dreariness of her life: the world of books. She became an insatiable reader and spent as much of her spare time as she could at the public library.
At the end of the week, there was never any money left for Kelly, so she got a job as a babysitter, envying the happy families she would never have.
* * *
AT SEVENTEEN, KELLY was developing into the beauty her mother had once been. The boys at school began asking her for dates. She was repelled. She turned them all down.
Saturdays, when there was no school and Kelly's chores were finished, she would hurry to the public library and spend the afternoon reading.
Lisa Marie Houston, the librarian, was an intelligent, sympathetic woman with a quiet, friendly manner and whose clothes were as unpretentious as her personality. Seeing Kelly in the library so often, Mrs. Houston became curious.