Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina Read Online Free Page A

flashed a wicked smile my way to tell me again that never would I be as pretty as the First and Best and Most Perfect Audrina. "And she was so brilliant in school, too. It's terrible the way she died, really awful. I'd be so ashamed if that happened to me, so ashamed I'd rather be dead."
"Shut up!" roared Papa in a voice so mighty that the ducks on the river flew away. He hurried then to put his pot of flowers on that grave, and then he seized my hand and pulled me toward his car.
Momma began to cry.
Already I knew Vera was right. Whatever wonderful specialness the First Audrina had possessed was buried in the grave with her.
    In the Cupola
.
Not wanted, not worthy, not pretty and not
    special enough were the words I thought as I went up the stairs and into the attic. I wished the First Audrina had never been born. I had to wade through the clutter of old dusty junk before I came to the rusty, iron, spiraling stairs that would take me through a square opening in the floor that once had a rickety iron guardrail that someday Papa was going to replace.
    In that octagon room there was a rectangular Turkey rug, all crimsons, golds and blues. Each day I visited I combed that fringe with my fingers, as Papa often raked through his dark hair with his fingers when he was enraged or frustrated. There were no furnishings in the cupola, only a pillow for me to sit on. The sunlight through the stained-glass windows fell upon the carpet in swirls like bright peacock feathers and confused the designs with patterns of colored light. My legs and arms were patterned, too, like impermanent tattoos. High above, dangling down from the apex of the pointed roof, were long rectangles of painted glass--Chinese wind chimes that hung from scarlet silken cords. They hung so high the wind never made them move, yet I often heard them tinkle, tinkle. If just one time they would sway for me while I watched, then I could believe I wasn't crazy.
    I fell down on the cushion on the rug and began to play with the old paper dolls that I kept lined up around the walls. Each one was named after someone I knew, but since I didn't know too many people, many of the paper dolls had the same names. But only one was named Audrina. It seemed I could vaguely remember once there had been men and boy dolls, but now I had only girls and ladies.
    I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I didn't hear a sound until suddenly a voice asked, "Are you thinking about me, sweet Audrina?"
    My head jerked around. There stood Vera in the haunted, colored lights of the cupola. Her straight hair was a pale apricot color unlike any other color I'd ever seen, but that wasn't unusual in our family. Her eyes very dark, like her mother's, like my father's.
    The colors refracted from the many windows cast myriad colored lights on the floor, tattooed patterns on her face, so I'm sure my eyes were lit up just like hers, like many-faceted jewels. The cupola was a magic place.
    "Are you listening to me, Audrina?" she asked, her voice whispery and scary. "Why do you just sit there and not answer? Have you lost your vocal cords as well as your memory?"
    I hated her being in the cupola. This was my own special, private room for trying to figure out what I couldn't remember as I moved the dolls about and pretended they were my family. Truthfully, I was putting the dolls through the years of my life, trying in this way to reconstruct and dredge up the secret that eluded me. Someday, some wonderful day, I hoped to retrieve from those dolls all I couldn't recall so that I'd be made whole, and just as wonderful as that dead sister ever was.
    Vera's left arm had just come out of a cast. She moved it gingerly as she stepped into my little sanctuary.
    Despite my off-and-on dislike for Vera, I felt sorry she could break her arm just by banging it against something hard. According to her she'd had eleven broken bones, and I'd never had any. Little brushes against a table and her wrist fractured. A slighter bump