Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina Read Online Free Page B

and huge purple bruises came to mar her skin for weeks. If she fell off her bed onto a soft, padded carpet she still broke a leg, an ankle, a forearm, something.
    "Does your arm still hurt?"
"Don't look at me with pity!" ordered Vera, limping into the cupola, then scrunching down on her heels in an awkward way. Her dark eyes bore holes into me. "I have fragile bones, small, delicate bones, and if they break easily, it's because I have more blue blood than you do."
    She could have her blue blood if it meant broken bones twice a year. Sometimes when she was so mean to me I thought God was punishing her. And sometimes I felt guilty because my bones were tough and refused to break even when I occasionally fell.
    Oh, I wondered again, if the First, Best and Most Perfect Audrina had been as aristocratic as Vera.
"And of course my arm hurts!" shrilled Vera, her dark eyes flashing with reds, greens and blues. "It hurts like hell!" Her voice turned plaintive as she went on. "When your arm is broken it makes you feel so helpless. It's really worse than a broken leg because there are so many things you can't do for yourself. Since you don't eat much, I don't know why your bones don't break more easily than mine . . . but, of course, you must have peasant bones."
I didn't know what to say.
"There's a boy in my class who looks at ale so sympathetically, and he carries my books, and talks to me, and asks me all kinds of questions. He's so handsome you just wouldn't believe it. His name is Arden Lowe. Isn't that an unusual and romantic name for a boy? Audrina, I think he's got a case on me . . . and he's kissed me twice in the cloakroom."
"What's a cloakroom?"
"My, are you stupid! Holes in the belfry with bats flying 'round, that's Papa's sweet Audrina." She giggled as she tossed her challenge. I didn't want to fight, so she went on to tell me more about her boyfriend named Arden Lowe. "His eyes are amber colored, the prettiest eyes you ever saw. When you get real close, you can see little flecks of green in his eyes. His hair is dark brown with reddish highlights when the sun hits it. He's smart, too. He's a year older than me, but that doesn't mean he's dumb, it just means he's traveled around so much he fell behind in his schoolwork." She sighed and looked dreamy.
"How old is Arden Lowe?"
"Yesterday I was twenty, so Arden was younger, naturally. He doesn't have my kind of talent for being any age I want to be. I guess he's eleven, and kind of a baby when I'm twenty, but such a goodlooking baby."
She smiled at me, but I knew darn well she couldn't be more than. . . than twelve? I went back to my dolls. "Audrina, you love those dolls more than you do me."
"No, I don't . . ." But I wasn't really too sure even as I said that.
"Then give me the boy and men dolls."
"All the boy and men dolls are gone," I answered in a funny, tight voice that made Vera open her eyes wide.
"Where did - all the male dolls go, Audrina?" she whispered in the weirdest kind of knowing voice that made me shiver.
"I don't know," I whispered back, somehow afraid. I quickly glanced around with scared eyes. Tinkle-tinkle sounded the chimes above as they dangled perfectly still. I shrank tighter inside. "I thought you took them."
"You're a baa... ad girl, Audrina, a really wicked girl. Someday you'll find out exactly how bad, and when you do, you'll want to die." She giggled and drew away.
What was wrong with me that she'd want to hurt me time and again? Or was something wrong with her? Like my mother and her sister. . . were we going to repeat history over and over?
Vera's pale, pasty face grinned at me wickedly, seeming to represent all evil. When she turned her head the colors came to play u n her skin and her apricot hair turned red, then blue streaked with violet. "Give me all your dolls, even if the best ones have gone on to hell." She reached to seize up half a dozen of the closest dolls.
Moving lightning fast, I snatched those dolls from her hands. Then, jumping to