The Stepsister Read Online Free

shrilly.
    Rich pushed his chair back with a loud squeal and stood up awkwardly. “Can I just go upstairs and read?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He picked up the Stephen King book and, without looking at any of them, hurried out of the room.
    â€œHey—what did I do?” Mr. Wallner asked, throwing up his hands, suddenly sounding very childish.
    â€œYou’re always embarrassing him, Daddy,” Jessie said, frowning.
    â€œI didn’t mean to,” he replied with a mouthful of cake. “I’ll go upstairs and apologize after I finish my cake. This is supposed to be a party, after all.”
    â€œShould he be reading a book like that?” Emily’s mom asked, sounding concerned. “Pet Sematary is supposed to be pretty gruesome, isn’t it?”
    â€œHe loves Stephen King,” Jessie told her.
    â€œHe’s a real bookworm,” Mr. Wallner said, pouring more coffee into his cup. “Not like his old dad. I don’t think I’ve picked up a book since high school.”
    Emily glanced over at Nancy, who returned her look. Both girls were thinking the same thing: That’s nothing to brag about. Both girls were also thinking how different Mr. Wallner was from their father.
    Emily looked at him, sitting at the table in his oversize, yellow sleeveless T-shirt and baggy, brown slacks with their attached elastic belt, and thought of how well dressed her father had always been. Dan Casey had been a pediatrician. He had always worn dark, serious suits with starched white shirts and conservative ties. He had been very young-looking—he had barely looked older than his twenties—and dressed to make himself look older so that the parents who brought their children to him would feel more confident.
    Her father, Emily remembered, had read two or three books a week, books of all kinds, which he liked to discuss with his two daughters. He would neverhave bragged about not having picked up a book in years.
    How could Mom have married someone so different from Daddy? Emily asked herself. Mr. Wallner was a manager in a furniture factory. He didn’t even wear a tie to work!
    Mom had been so lonely, Emily thought. Maybe she just settled.
    She tried not to think about that terrible day on the lake. But she couldn’t keep the memories away. It was as if they had a life of their own. Emily could be in school, taking an exam, or at a movie, or on a date, or sitting at the dining-room table as she was now, and the memories would flood back to her, forcing her to relive the horror again . . . and again.
    Her dad had loved to camp out. The whole family did. Sometimes they wouldn’t even wait for the warm weather to come. They’d load the station wagon with equipment and drive off to a state park or a nearby forest area and spend the weekend roughing it in the bright blue canvas tents Mr. Casey kept in the garage.
    That weekend they’d been camping on Fear Island, the small, uninhabited, wooded island in the center of the lake across from the Fear Street woods. The weather was exhilaratingly brisk, to say the least. A strong gusting wind made the normally calm lake waters toss and tumble into white, frothy waves.
    The tents flapped noisily in the wind. It was hard to get the campfire lit, and once lit the flames darted out in all directions, pushed by the shifting winds.
    The air smelled so piney and fresh. Even Nancy, who had to be dragged along because she had to cancela date with Josh, was cheered by the beauty of the woods, the excitement of being the only people for miles around.
    Why had Emily and her father been in the powerboat?
    Her memories of that terrible day were so vivid. But for some reason she couldn’t remember getting into the boat, couldn’t remember where they were headed, why they had decided to battle the choppy, wind-tossed waters.
    Maybe that was the reason. Maybe Emily and her dad had just wanted to challenge the