Gabby Duran and the Unsittables Read Online Free Page A

the near lemminglike leap to
oblivion, of course. That I must admit was disappointing.”
    Gabby was stunned. “You know my name.”
    “I know many things.”
    Outside the window, Gabby watched her exit whiz by. “Um…I think we need to turn around,” Gabby said. “I live that way.”
    As she spoke, she eased open her purple knapsack. If she moved slowly and didn’t get the woman’s attention, she could sneak out her phone and dial 911.
    “You can call the authorities if you’d like,” the woman said. “But I have no intention of harming you. Quite the opposite. I have a proposition for you. One I believe
you’ll find intriguing, and one you won’t get to hear should you report this event to another human being. Or electronic device, in case you imagined that was a loophole.”
    Gabby
had
thought that was a loophole. If she texted her mom, she wouldn’t
technically
be reporting directly to another human being. So much for that idea.
    “You were in front of my house this morning,” Gabby said. “And at the studio in Florida.”
    “And cats bathe by licking themselves, and Henry the Eighth had six wives,” the woman sighed. “Would you like to recite more facts I already know?”
    Gabby felt chastened, even though she was fairly sure she was the one being wronged in this situation. She sat a little straighter and challenged the woman. “What if I don’t want to
hear your proposition? What if I tell you to immediately turn this car around and take me home?”
    “Well, I certainly hope you’d have the decency to ask rather than tell me, but if you indeed made such a request, I would do just that. After admonishing you for carelessly splitting
infinitives, of course. But then you’d never know what you’d missed.”
    Gabby leaned back in her seat, considering. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She supposed she should be. An interstate stalker who spoke in cryptic promises and drove Gabby away from home
without asking first was pretty much a textbook call-for-help situation. Yet the more she spoke with the old woman, the less frightened she became. The woman’s voice had the clipped tones of
a no-nonsense boarding school headmistress. It was the kind of voice that didn’t suffer fools and wouldn’t waste time on lies. If she said she wouldn’t harm Gabby and would take
her home if she asked, Gabby believed her.
    “Well?” the woman asked. “Would you like to hear my offer?”
    Gabby imagined telling the story of this moment to the people she loved most. Carmen would accuse her of idiocy and Alice would worry about her safety. Both would want her to turn around and go
home. Satchel would vote for home, too. Much as he could handle anything on a movie screen, in real life he’d freak out if he stepped on a crack or spilled salt. This would have him
hyperventilating.
    Then she heard Zee’s voice in her head.
It’s always better to know than not know. Always
.
    Gabby smiled. Those were the words Zee said when they’d bonded as lab partners in fourth grade and wondered how much Jell-O powder it would take to turn the school pool into a gelatinous
dessert. Gabby had agreed then, and she agreed just as much now. Besides, hearing what the woman had to say didn’t commit her to anything.
    Still, she felt she had a right to make a demand—a
request
—of her own. “First, I’d like to know your name,” she said.
    “You may call me Edwina,” the woman replied.
    “Because that’s your name?”
    “Because it will suffice.”
    Gabby still didn’t say yes. She took a moment to study Edwina. The triplets had thought she was ancient. She wasn’t quite that, but the deep lines along her forehead and down her
cheeks did peg her as older, maybe even seventy. The white hair piled into a tight bun beneath her chauffeur’s cap also aged her. Only her brown eyes seemed young and strong. They were sharp
and piercing, filled with keen intelligence. Gabby understood why the triplets had found the woman