Spyhole Secrets Read Online Free

her eye back to the opening, the girl was still looking away from her, out the window and down toward Warwick Avenue.
    She had an unusual face, Hallie thought. Not just cute in the ordinary teenage girl way, with a pug nose and lots of eyelashes. And not the kind of face you can describe the best features of, like sexy eyes or movie-star lips. But the whole face, eyes and nose and mouth, was put together in an interesting way so that it somehow resembled a face from an old painting, or maybe from a fairy tale or an ancient myth.
    But it was mostly the hair that was so extraordinary. Long, straight, and heavy, its blondness tinged to a greenish shimmer by the blue light, it looked like the hair of some kind of supernatural being. A mermaid, maybe. Or that princess who let her hair down from the tower so her boyfriend, the prince, could use it as a ladder. Rapunzel, that was it. It definitely did look like the hair of a Rapunzel-type fairy-tale princess.
    The Rapunzel girl stayed at the window for a long time and, across the air well, so did Hallie, even though she definitely felt uncomfortable about what she was doing. At first only physically uncomfortable, from the sweltering heat, but as time passed there was another kind of discomfort that got stronger the longer she went on watching. She didn’t know why exactly, except that staring right into the face of someone who didn’t know you were there wasdefinitely a weird sensation. Kind of nightmarish, actually, almost like being invisible.
    Several long, fascinating but uneasy minutes passed before the girl suddenly turned away, went to where she’d left her backpack, and then came back, holding a piece of paper in both hands. Back at the window, she went on looking first at the paper and then out toward Warwick Avenue while her expression changed and changed again, from quivering-lip tragic to happy anticipation—and back to tragic. And Hallie went on watching her and wondering who she was and what she was doing and why.
    At last the girl shook her head hard, flipped a long sheaf of hair back over her shoulder, turned slowly away, and left the room.
    Nothing more happened. Nothing moved in the blue-lit room except when Hallie moved her head enough to set waves of blue light rippling across the striped wallpaper and klutzy furniture. But she stayed at the spyhole until her watch reminded her that it was time to leave. Her mother would be home soon.
    Making her way back across the attic, Hallie thought about the girl with the Rapunzel hair even while she was keeping one eye out for Mrs. Crowley’s ghosts. Other frustrating things were crowding back into her mind, like the snobby kids at Irvington Middle School and the unbelievable lie she’d just toldErin. But the Rapunzel girl and the secret spyhole were there too, at least until she was in her own apartment again.
    By five o’clock, however, everything was back to normal. At least back to what had been more or less normal lately, which meant that by the time her mother came home, Hallie was curled up in the old leather chair that had been her dad’s, with her eyes closed and an unopened book in her lap.
    Paula Meredith put a bag of groceries away in the kitchen before she stuck her head around the corner and said, “There you are, sweetie. So, how was school today? Better than yesterday, I hope.”
    Hallie opened her eyes and shrugged and, in a tone of voice that made it mean just the opposite, said, “School? Oh, great. Absolutely fabulous.”
    “Oh? Absolutely fabulous, huh?” Her mother knew she didn’t mean it. Her savings-and-loan smile, the kind she put on every day like a uniform, faded a little. Hallie was glad to see it go. She hated it when her mother’s cheerfulness obviously said “See how brave I’m being, and it’s all for your sake.”
    Hallie sighed and looked away, hiding her eyes. She hated her mother’s phony smiles, but… She shrugged and shook her head, trying not to remember that she