"A.C.H. Smith - Labyrinth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith A.C.H)

and Sarah had been unable to think of an answer. "Half
nothing-to-do-with-me." That was no good. It wasn't true, either.
Sometimes she felt fiercely protective of Toby, wanted to dress him
up and carry him in her arms and take him away from all this, to a
better place, a fairer world, an island somewhere, perhaps. At other
times -- and this was one -- she hated Toby, who had twice as many
parents in attendance on him as she had. When she hated Toby, it
frightened her, because it led her into thinking about how she could
hurt him. There must be something wrong with me, she would reflect,
that I can even think of hurting someone I dote upon; or is it that
there is something wrong in doting upon someone I hate? She wished
she had a friend who would understand the dilemma, and maybe explain
it to her, but there was no one. Her friends at school would think
her a witch if she even mentioned the idea of hurting Toby, and as
for her father, it would frighten him even more than it frightened
Sarah herself. So she kept the perplexity well hidden.

Sarah stood before her stepmother and deliberately held her head
high. "I'm sorry," she said, in a bored voice, to show that she
wasn't sorry at all, and anyway, it was unnecessary to make a thing
out of it.

"Well," her stepmother told her, "don't stand out there in the rain.
Come on." She stood aside, to make room for Sarah to pass her in the
doorway, and she glanced again at her wristwatch.

Sarah made a point of never touching her stepmother, not even
brushing against her clothes. She edged inside close to the door
frame. Merlin started to follow her.

"Not the dog," her stepmother said.

"But it's pouring."

Her stepmother wagged her finger at Merlin, twice. "In the garage,
you," she commanded. "Go on."

Merlin dropped his head and loped around the side of the house. Sarah
watched him go and bit her lip. Why, she wondered for the trillionth
time, does my stepmother always have to put on this performance when
they go out in the evening. It was so hammy -- that was one of
Sarah's favorite words, since she had heard her mother's costar,
Jeremy, use it to put down another actor in the play they were doing
-- such a rag-bag of over-the-top cliches. She remembered how
Jeremy had sounded French when he said cliches, thrilling her with
his sophistication. Why couldn't her stepmother find a new way into
the part? Oh, she loved the way in which Jeremy talked about other
actors. She was determined to become an actress herself, so that she
could talk like that all the time. Her father seldom talked at all
about people at his office, and when he did it was dreary in