"Duncan,.Lois.-.Summer.Of.Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

"No," I said, trying to smile back at her. "She and Dad aren't even up yet. I just wanted to speak to Mike before he left for the pool."
"I'll call him." She held the door wide and called back over her shoulder, "Mike, Rachel's here!"
"I'll be down in a minute," Mike's voice called back from somewhere in the upper region of the house.
It was a good deal more than a minute. In fact, it seemed like hours as I sat at the kitchen table in the Gallaghers' pleasant kitchen, sipping at the glass of orange juice that Mike's mother had forced into my hand and trying to make polite conversation.
When at last he appeared in the doorway, Mike was wearing his swimming trunks and his T-shirt with "Coronado Club" across the front, and he had a towel draped around his neck.
"I've got to run," he said. "I have to hose down the sun area and set out the deck chairs before the pool opens."
"You might say 'good morning,'" I said.
"Good morning, Rae," He spoke the words in my direction, but his eyes flicked past me, unable to focus on my face.
"I'd like to talk with you," I said, "before you go."
"I don't have time," Mike began, and thenЧ"Okay, but it'll have to be fast. Why don't you walk out to the car with me?"
So we walked out to the car, side by side with our arms swinging but not swinging together, our hands not touching, with the bright morning sunlight warm upon our shoulders and the back of our necks and the birds still singing away in a joyful chorus high over our heads.
Neither of us spoke until we reached the car, and then Mike said, "I guess you want to know what happened."
"Yes," I said. "I think you ought to tell me."
"I would if I could," Mike said. "I just don't know myself. I never had anything like this happen before."
"Are you in love with her?" I asked. I knew the answer, but I had to ask.
"It happened so fast," Mike said. "We didn't plan it or anything, Rae. It just happened likeЧwell, like being hit by lightning."
"The way it was with us?"
"No, not that way at all. You and IЧwe just sort of grew into the thing. I mean, we'd known each other so long, and it was a friendship thing first, and then it got to be more. But with Julia and me it was like an explosion the first time I put my arm around her to dance. I'm sorry, Rae." He did look at me now and those honest blue eyes were wide and bewildered and guilty and happy and worried and sad, all at one time. "I never wanted to hurt you. I wouldn't have hurt you for anything if I could have helped it. You'reЧwell, you're a great girl."
"Sure," I said. "Thanks a heap,"
He stood there by the car with his hand on the door handle, looking down at me uncertainly. "Can we still be friends?"
"I've got plenty of friends already," I told him. "I don't need another casual friend."
"You don't have to be nasty."
"I'm not the one who's nasty," I said, my voice trembling. "I'm not the one who goes around snatching other people's boyfriends. It was my pink dress she was wearingЧmy new dress!" It was a stupid thing to say, but I could see her there in my mind's eyes as she must have been at the dance with her face lifted to Mike's and that thick black hair falling rich and soft over the pink fabric over which I had worked so long and hard. "I ran a sewing machine needle through my finger making that dress!"
"Now you're being silly," Mike said, sounding relieved because I suppose he had been afraid that I would cry. "The dress had nothing to do with anything. Hey, what happened to the hives you were supposed to have had last night? You look just like normal."
"They disappeared overnight," I said bitterly. "That's one thing hives and boyfriends seem to have in common."
It was a wonderful parting line, and I turned quickly and walked back across the lawn to my own yard, hoping it would ring in Ms ears all morning. I did not feel like crying. I was far too angry to cry. I wanted to scream and stamp my feet. I wanted to go upstairs and haul Julia out of bed and yank all that black hair out of her head. I wanted to untie my dog and take him up to the room where Julia lay, vulnerable and defenseless, and dump him on top of her and let him bite her. Or, if he didn't do that, he could at least growl and scare her. Anything he did would be better than nothing.
Well, why not, I asked myself. It's my room, isn't it, and Trick's my dog. I guess I can have my own dog in my own room if I want him there, and if Julia doesn't like it she can move out!
"Trick," I called. "Hey, Trickle! Here, boy!"
He was still lying there in a little hollow of grass at the edge of the bush. When he did not move I went over to him and knelt down beside him and touched his back. There was a strange rigidity about it.
I rolled him over on his side, and his head flopped limply, and I knew that he was dead.
Dead!
I had never known anything that had died before. Oh, I had seen dead birds lying on the lawn, tiny ones that had fallen out of nests and once a larger one who had flown into a plate glass window. Back when Bobby was little and had kept turtles, they had all died at once because of some strange turtle disease, and I had once seen a cat that had been run over in the street. But there had never been anything of my own that had died, never anything I had loved, and for a while I could only kneel there numbly stroking the soft white coat, unable to accept the fact of death.
"I'll take you to the vet tomorrow," I had told him. I would never take him anywhere now. Not to the vet. Not to the park for a run. Not to my room to He patiently beside the desk as I studied. There would be no more use for the red plastic dishes that held his food and water or for the blue collar with the name tag that readЧTRICKLE, I BELONG TO RACHEL BRYANT, 1112 DAKOTA NE.
He's gone, I thought incredulously.
I knelt there a long time, and finally I got up and went into the house.
There was a pot of coffee on the stove which meant that Mother was up and about, and an empty cereal dish on the table which meant that Bobby was also. From the den I could hear the television blaring out the awful Saturday morning cartoon shows that Bobby loved now as much as he had when he was the right age for them. There was no sign of my father, so I knew that Mother had left him sleeping and was probably trying to get some film developed before she had to come in and fix breakfast.
I went out to the garage and rapped on the darkroom door.
"Don't come in," Mother called from inside. "I have film exposed."
"Trickle's dead," I told her through the door.
"What?" There was a pause, and then Mother's voice said, "Oh, honey!" There was the sound of a locker opening and closing as the film was shut away, and then the door opened and Mother emerged with a look of shock on her face.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"I'm sure."
"Oh, honey, how dreadful!"
She reached out to put her arms around me, but I pulled back, not wanting to be touched.
"You made me tie him out in the yard," I said. "You and Dad made me do that. He died of grief because he thought nobody loved him any longer."
"I can't believe that," Mother said. "He must have been very sick. That would explain why he bit Julia. That seemed so strangeЧso unlike him. He was always such a friendly little dog until then."
"He's out in back, still tied up," I said.
"Oh, dear." Her forehead crinkled into worry lines as she tried to decide what to do. "I suppose we should cover him with something."
"I'll do it," I said. "I don't want anybody handling him but me. I'm the only one who loved him. All the rest of you hated him because he bit your precious niece, your sneaking, two-faced, darling Julia!"
I felt the tears trying to come, and I fought against them.