The Spanish Kidnapping Disaster Read Online Free

drew a line with her finger down the middle of the double bed. "This is my side," she told me, gesturing to make it perfectly clear.
    "Don't worry," I said. "I have no intention of encroaching on your space."
    "My, what big words you know," Amy said sarcastically. "You must have eaten your talented and gifted vocabulary lists."
    When Phillip laughed, Amy was encouraged to add, "You were probably starving. Anything would taste better than the food your mother fixes."
    Without hesitating, I decided to escalate the war of insults. Amy had been criticizing Mom's meals since she'd eaten her first dinner with us, way back when neither one of us suspected that we'd be sisters someday. I was tired of listening to her.
    "My mother may not be a gourmet cook," I said, "but
she's home every night.
She
didn't run away with her music appreciation teacher."
    This was a low blow, aimed at Amy's mother, the former Mrs. Capshaw, who had indeed eloped with a professor from the community college. But Amy had asked for it. My mother had spent four years in college learning to be a chemist in a laboratory, not a slave in a kitchen.
    For a moment Amy and Phillip stared at me as if my words had turned them to stone. Then Amy's face flushed scarlet. "Well," she said, "at least my mother sees Phillip and me every Sunday. She doesn't just mail a check two or three times a year like your father!"
    For emphasis, Amy hurled one of her fashion magazines at me. I ducked, and it whacked the wall behind me.
    "You shut up!" I yelled. "My dad sees me whenever he can! He can't help it if he has to travel all over the world!" Furious, I threw the magazine back at Amy, but I was too mad to aim well. It sailed wide of its target and knocked a lamp off the dresser instead of hitting her.
    "I'm telling," Phillip squealed and ran for the door.
    "Tattletale," I shouted as the door opened and Don appeared with Mom behind him.
    "Hold it," Don said. "Can't we leave you kids alone for five minutes without a fight starting?"
    "Amy said you were a bad cook," I told Mom.
    "Felix insulted my mother," Amy told Don.
    "They were both yelling," Phillip chimed in, "and Felix threw a magazine and knocked over the lamp, but I didn't do anything. I was just trying to go to sleep."
    "She started it," Amy and I said together as if we'd practiced.
    "Well, you can both stop," Mom said as Don picked up the lamp and set it on the bureau. "Right now." She frowned equally at both Amy and me to show how fair she was being. "Tell Amy you're sorry, Felix."
    "And you apologize to Felix," Don told Amy.
    "I'm not sorry," I said to Mom. "She's a stuck-up, conceited brat."
    "I'm not sorry either." Amy glared at me. "She's a loudmouthed showoff, and I hate her!"
    Mom and Don looked at each other. In the silence, Phillip said, "Can we go to bed now? I'm sleepy."
    "Not until I hear some apologies." Don folded his arms across his chest and stared hard, first at Amy, then at me.
    "Come on, you all," Phillip begged. "Just say it. Who cares if you mean it?"
    As Don turned to Phillip, Amy and I exchanged nasty looks. At the same time, Mom gave me a little nudge toward Amy. "Be a good sport, Felix," she said.
    "Okay, okay," I mumbled, shrinking away from Mom's hand. "I'm sorry, Amy." Silently I added, "Sorry the magazine hit the lamp instead of you, sorry I have to say this, sorry I'm in Spain with you, and, most of all, sorry my mother married your father."
    Then Amy muttered her apologies, probably adding a few silent qualifications herself, and Don and Mom smiled at us in a benign, parental way.
    "Now can we go to sleep?" Phillip asked.
    "That's a wonderful idea," Don said. He yawned and winked at Mom.
    "No more fighting, kids—okay?" Mom lingered a moment, her hand on the doorknob. "We're a family now. Let's act like one."
    As soon as the light went out, Phillip flopped down on his rollaway bed. From where I lay next to Amy, I could hear the tinny sound of his Walkman, and I knew he was listening to