The Second Life of Abigail Walker Read Online Free Page A

Abby up. Gabe was eight and wanted to be a hockey player when he grew up, even though he’d never ice-skated in his life. He just thought it was cool how hockey players were always beating up on each other and never getting in trouble for it.
    Abby was happy to be walking up the hill, reading a book about art and flowers and thinking about her brothers. She was happy that she didn’t have to worry if this was going to be a good Kristen day or a bad Kristen day. She was happy because she’d found a Kit Kat bar she’d forgotten about in her scrap paper drawer and snuck it into her lunch bag. Now that she wasn’t going to sit with the medium girls, she could have what she wanted. No one would be there making snarky faces as they checked out what she had to eat.
    When she got to the top of the hill, she glanced up from a painting of a sunflower so yellow that it practically glowed in the dark and saw Kristen and Georgia. When they saw her, theyturned away. Abby’s stomach went icy cold, and then her skin got prickly hot because it infuriated her that they could make her feel scared and alone just by turning around. They weren’t the boss of her feelings! But a second later she thought maybe they were, because she suddenly wanted to change back to being someone who tried to get along with everyone else. She could beg. Or she could laugh. What a good joke! I can’t believe you took me seriously.
    Did her hand throb a little? She thought maybe it did, and she remembered the little red fox with its delicate nose and intelligent eyes. She hadn’t been scared of the fox, so why was she scared of Kristen and Georgia? She thought about how gently the fox had bitten her. It could have been so much worse! A fox could snap a chicken’s neck with its mouth if it wanted to. So maybe the fox was trying to tell her something by biting her. Maybe biting her was its crafty and sly way of getting her attention.
    Abby stood at the edge of the bus stop and kept thinking about the fox and what it had been trying to tell her. What could a fox know abouther? Had the fox been sneaking around the edges of her life for a while now, noticing things, coming up with ideas to make Abby’s life better? Did the fox have some clever, foxy advice for what she should do about Kristen and Georgia?
    Even when the bus came lumbering down the road, Kristen and Georgia kept their backs to Abby. She started to giggle. There was something funny about how dramatic they were being, like actors in a movie about girls who didn’t like each other anymore. She had to hand it to Kristen, though. A lesser girl would have swung around and snapped at her— Oh, you think you’re so smart, so funny, so great —but not Kristen. Abby could see Georgia twitch. Georgia wanted to turn around and slap her. But Kristen put her hand on Georgia’s shoulder, and they stayed frozen in place.
    Abby got on the bus first. She took the seat behind the bus driver and returned to her book on art and flowers. One of the artists had been able to draw anything in the world from the time he was five years old, and people from miles around came to look at his pictures. When Abbywas five, she’d built a Lego village under her bed and dreamed that one day she would be tiny enough to live in it.
    Kids filed by. One kid, the next kid, the next kid, the next, then Georgia, who stopped at Abby’s seat and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You’re dead,” she hissed, and Abby felt confused. Really? Kristen and Georgia were going to kill her? Were going to have her killed?
    She blew into her fist. Her breath was warm. She wasn’t dead, and she probably wasn’t going to be dead anytime soon.
    â€œOkay,” Abby replied to Georgia. “That’s fine.”
    Mr. Lee was sitting at his desk when she walked into language arts, but when he saw her he stood and came over to her desk. Watched Abby wrestle her LA