The Accident Read Online Free Page B

treat him like dirt. He probably has his limits, like everyone else. I was with Jenny a couple of weeks ago when Donny asked her to a movie. She turned him down. She was more polite than you, Hil, but he stomped off down the hall like he was squashing bugs. He was not happy.”
    Megan frowned. “He asked Jenny out? Jenny Winn?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I think he asked Cappie out, too,” Hilary said. “I saw them arguing in the hall last week. Donny yelled something about girls who say they have to wash their hair when anyone with eyes can see their hair isn’t the least bit dirty.” Hilary grinned. “I thought it was pretty funny.” The grin disappeared. “Now I’m not so sure.” Her blue eyes narrowed.
    “I feel sorry for Donny,” Megan said. “Nobody likes him, and I think his home life stinks. His parents are divorced, and he moves back and forth between two different homes. That can’t be much fun.”
    “My parents are divorced, too,” Hilary said airily, “but I’m not a dweeb like Donny.”
    “Sure you are,” Justin said lazily, grinning. “You’re just prettier than Donny.”
    “It must be awful to be so unpopular,” Megan said slowly. She was remembering the dream, hearing Juliet say again that she’d been popular. Donny wasn’t. But he was still luckier than Juliet had been. He just didn’t know it.
    “Oh, Megan,” Hilary said in exasperation, “You’re always feeling sorry for people! You just don’t get it that there are some really crummy people out there who don’t have good excuses for the rotten way they act. Get with the program, will you?”
    “But that’s what makes her so lovable,” Justin said lightly, giving Megan’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “That’s part of her charm.”
    Megan smiled up at him. Hilary made a gagging gesture, but she grinned as she did it.
    Before they went back into school, Megan turned and looked back at the lawn. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to her. So why did she have this feeling that she was a specimen under a microscope? It gave her goose bumps.
    Later, passing Donny Richardson in the hall on her way to art class, she found herself smiling at him with more warmth than usual.
    He looked surprised, and his skinny black mustache remained in place, refusing to curve into a return smile. Megan had a feeling that even if he had smiled, it wouldn’t have reached his eyes. They seemed so cold and empty.
    When she reached the art room, she went straight to her assigned cubbyhole at the rear of the room. There was a square of red construction paper sticking halfway out, sandwiched between her latest drawing and her box of pastels.
    She hadn’t used red construction paper lately.
    Curious, she slid the paper out of the cubbyhole and looked at it. What she saw was a crude, childish drawing of a large yellow car with no top, filled with a strange cargo.
    Megan walked over to the big window to look at the picture in better light.
    It was horrible. Seated in the driver’s seat of the crudely drawn car was a … horse? Wearing a string of pink beads around its throat. On the passenger’s side of the front seat sat what looked like a large candy bar beside a fat yellow-and-black-striped blob with wings. A bumblebee.
    What on earth … ?
    Her eyes moved to the backseat. A hat of some kind was drawn there. It had a visor with an emblem on it. A baseball cap? There was a small, green ball beside it. A green baseball? No. It looked more like an oversized green pea.
    As people began to file into the big art room, Megan studied the picture carefully. It was a simple puzzle. The car was clearly Jenny’s. The candy bar and the bumblebee were easy: Bar. Bee. Barbie. And the cap and the pea meant Cappie. But why was there a horse in the driver’s seat?
    What kind of twisted mind would draw such a sick picture about a tragic accident?
    And why was it in Megan’s cubbyhole?
    Was it a joke? If it was, someone at Philippa had a very bizarre sense