Stay (Dunham series #2) Read Online Free Page A

was on a map. It was a long way away, but he sure as
hell was not going to pass up this opportunity.
    “Yes, sir,” he breathed, wondering how his nemesis
had turned into his mentor in the blink of an eye.
    “We’ll help you, Eric,” said his science teacher.
Eric turned to the man who’d spent the last year torturing him with
physics and who’d spend next year torturing him with chemistry.
“BYU is a prestigious university and difficult to get into,
especially for a non-Mormon who’s not an athlete.”
    “But,” Hilliard murmured, “you’re half American
Indian and that trumps everything else in that admissions office.
With your grades and ACT score, there won’t be a question.”
    “You’ll need an ecclesiastical endorsement,” added
his English teacher, who was also his guidance counselor, “but I
don’t think we’ll have a problem rounding up a preacher somewhere.
Do you have a church?”
    “He is Osage,” his mother said, her tone sharp, “as
Mr. Hilliard just said. He doesn’t go to any white man’s
church.”
    “He won’t have to,” Jenkins said gruffly, the way he
said everything. “My pastor owes me a favor. He’ll do it.”
    Hilliard nodded then, satisfied. “Thank you,
everyone,” he said, and Eric knew it was settled. Had settled. All
around him. Like the snow in a snow globe. Eric felt as if he’d
been inside it and gotten his head rattled around. “Eric, you
stay.”
    Everyone took this as their cue to file out. The
door closed quietly after them.
    Eric swallowed, not sure how to treat this man, only
barely able to look at him, wondering what obeisance would be
required, willing to walk away from the deal if Hilliard wanted . .
.
    “The Whittakers,” he said, low, and Eric snapped to
attention, looking Hilliard square in the face. “You know the
family?”
    “I told you everything I know,” Eric replied, still
wary, still suspicious of a trap. “Simone dresses up older than her
age and puts out to anybody who’ll have her. I’ve seen her sister.
Seen their mother here and there, shootin’ her mouth off, slappin’
the little girl around.” That woman was plain evil.
    Hilliard nodded slowly, looking at the floor, his
tongue stuck in his cheek. Eric knew that look by now. Thinking.
Eric waited long moments before Hilliard decided to speak again;
even so, it startled him.
    “Simone had planned it to the last detail and was
stupid enough to write it down. I don’t know if her mother was in
on it, but I suspect so. Simone seems to get vindictive when she
doesn’t get what she wants and what she wanted was you .”
    Eric swallowed. For once in his life, he’d done the
right thing, and it had nearly destroyed him.
    “Vanessa. The little girl. Simone’s sister. She
brought me Simone’s diary. It was all there. Not only did Simone
not get you, she lost the rest of her playmates, too. She named
names. I’m rounding them up right now.”
    Eric’s breath stuck in his throat.
    “Tell me something. Would you want to go back
home to LaVon Whittaker, knowing you’d gone against her? Go back to
school knowing that half a dozen male juniors and seniors, a
teacher, and a couple other grown men with their own families are
going to prison because you coughed up the evidence?”
    “Fuck no,” he whispered, horrified. LaVon Whittaker,
all Eric’s burly classmates and their fathers, the families of the
other men who’d done Simone Whittaker—versus one little girl.
    “Yeah, me neither. So you think about that. Think
about what a twelve-year-old girl did for you just because it was
the right thing to do. Don’t let her down, Eric. Don’t let what she
did for you be in vain.”
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    4: Young Mr. Wilder
     
     
    May 1996
     
    And there he was again. Tall, dark, and very
dangerous.
    The senior girls had always flocked around him
because he was “hot.” They said he knew things—things about girls
and how to make them feel good.
    Well, Vanessa felt good