Dread Locks Read Online Free

should make them one of your famous fruit baskets. Everybody loves those.”
    Mom considered it. Her fruit baskets truly were famous in our neighborhood, and she prided herself on them. I knew she would want nothing more than to impress the new neighbors with one.
    “Check to see if there are any baskets in the basement,” Mom said, but I didn’t have to check, because I already knew that there were—just as I knew we had plenty of fruit.
    It took her almost an hour to craft it to perfection, and of course I dutifully volunteered to take it over.
    “You’re being awfully helpful today,” she said, looking at me suspiciously, as if I had an ulterior motive—which I did.
    “He’s probably going to eat it on the way,” suggested Katrina.
    “Don’t you dare!” Mom warned.
    Five minutes later I was at Tara’s door, ringing the bell. I could hear the chimes sound deep within the house, and a moment later, Tara opened the door herself.
    “Hey, Baby Baer,” she said.
    “Hey,” I answered back, not bothered by her nickname for me—as long as she didn’t use it in front of other people. “Somehow I figured with a mansion like this, you’d have a butler answering the door.”
    She laughed. “Well, we ran out of food, so we had to eat him.”
    It was such a weird thing to say I didn’t know whether to laugh or what, so I just ended up giggling stupidly.
    “But it looks like we won’t have that problem anymore,” she said, “because now we have fruit!”
    “Huh?”
    She pointed to the gift basket.
    “Oh, yeah, right. Fruit.” I held it out to her. “Here’s a welcome gift from my mom. She wanted to bring it over herself, but she’s under the weather.”
    “We’re all under the weather,” Tara said. “If we weren’t, we’d be in space, and our lungs would explode.”
    I was not going to let myself be thrown off balance by her weirdness. “Exactly which mental institution did you escape from?” I asked her. “And is there a reward for your return? Because, hey, I could use some spare cash.”
    She fluffed her golden curls. “Wanna come in?”
    I shrugged like it was nothing. “Sure.”
    I stepped in to find myself in a grand foyer floored with purple marble and rimmed with white stone statues. She led me into a huge living room with thickly padded furniture—the kind you would sit in and never want to rise out of. I could still smell the aroma of fresh paint. The walls were shocking pink, with moldings and windowsills painted shiny black. It was a weird combination, yet somehow it fit.
    “Does color blindness run in your family?”
    She put down the fruit basket on a glass table, picking a few grapes for herself. “My family has unique tastes.”
    “As your butler found out.”
    She frowned at me then. I didn’t expect that. I thought she liked throwing verbal darts at each other. I sure liked it.
    “I don’t have a butler because my family doesn’t believe in hired help,” she told me. “We do everything ourselves.”
    Somehow I had liked it better when she had suggested they had eaten him.
    I sat in one of the soft chairs, and it all but swallowed me. “Are your parents around?” I asked. “Should I meet them?”
    “They’re in Europe with my sisters,” she said. “Shopping.”
    “Couldn’t they just go to the mall?”
    She didn’t answer me, just stared down at me floating in the billows of the chair.
    “So then who’s here with you? I mean, they didn’t leave you alone, right?”
    She didn’t answer at first, then she said, “They trust me. I’m very self-sufficient.”
    I have to say it surprised me—our parents got all worried when they had to leave us alone for a single evening. But then I thought, these people are super-rich. Old-money rich. People like that live by their own rules.
    “Want the grand tour?” she asked.
    “What’s it cost?”
    She smiled. “A basket of fruit.”
    “Whew—good thing I had one.” I struggled to get out of the deep,