Read Online Cat by V. C. Andrews - Free Book Online Page A

Inquisition." I
laughed. "I remember watching those court shows on
television, sometimes and imagining my mother in the courtroom, questioning the defendants, drilling them with biting questions as she fixed her eyes on their faces, catching every tiny revealing movement in their
lips or in the way they shifted their gazes.
"You don't lie to my mother. That's one thing
you don't do," I said almost proudly.
"You've got to be able to lie to your parents
sometimes," Jade said.
Misty nodded vigorously. "Jade's right. It's
better for them and better for you. What they don't
know, won't hurt them."
"It was just the opposite with my mother," Star
said. "She wouldn't know the truth if she tripped over
it. She was more comfortable with lies."
"Did you lie about something or just not tell the
whole truth?" Misty asked me. She smiled. "That's the
way I get around things sometimes."
"I guess I did a combination of both," I said.
"But not in the beginning I was too nervous and afraid
to do that. As I said, all I had to do was mention a
girl's name and my mother would stop whatever she
was doing and turn on me.
"'Where were you with her? What did she say
exactly? What did she mean by that? Who are her
parents? Where does she live? What does she look
like?' "She would -ask her questions in shotgun
fashion, shaking her head and spitting out another
before I had a chance to answer the one before. The
more I didn't know about the girl, the worse it was.
Usually, she would end by forbidding me to talk to
her again and I'd have to remember to never mention
that girl's name."
Jade spun angrily on Doctor Marlowe. "How can you let her continue to live with such
a monster? She hits her. She won't let her make
friends. She treats her like she's something dirty. Why
don't you tell the authorities?"
Doctor Marlowe closed her eyes softly and
opened them with a gentle smile.
"Cathy has a great deal more to say and you
should hear it all before you come to any conclusions,
Jade. You wouldn't have liked it any other way, would
you?"
Jade turned back to me, still fuming, her arms
wrapped tightly around herself, her eyes bright with
anger.
"Your mother's a Nazi," she muttered. I didn't laugh or reply. I waited for a surge of
nausea to pass and then I took a breath and continued. "There was this girl, Kelly Sullivan, whose
father works for the church in some administrative
capacity. I think he manages properties or something.
Her mother is in a wheelchair. She has multiple
sclerosis. They live in a nice, ranch-style house only
about ten minutes by car from us.
"Kelly has beautiful green eyes and apricot red
hair. She's a lot smaller than me, slimmer, I should
say, but most girls who were my age in the eighth
grade were. She hated her freckles. There were
patches of them on each check and even on the
bottom of her chin, but she had a pretty face. She
thought her freckles made her look like a freak and of
course, I had my problem. Her parents were like my
mother in that they didn't want Kelly to wear any
makeup, not even lipstick. I actually thought she and I
had a lot in common and for a while, I had hopes that
she would be a real best friend. We often talked in the
cafeteria and we shared three classes. She had other
friends, but she didn't seem to me to be that popular.
She was shy in school and when she met my mother,
she was so sweet and polite, my mother looked at her
with such approval and pleasure, I was actually
jealous.
"I mean, Kelly had almost no figure yet, which my mother thought was good and normal, and Kelly was full of please's and thank you's, just the recipe for the kind of little girl my mother wanted. I had been talking about her enough for my mother to finally consent to my bringing her home with me one afternoon. I was afraid to, afraid that once Kelly met my mother and had my mother grill her with questions, she would never want to talk to me again, but I liked Kelly and wanted her for a friend and knew if I didn't have Mother's approval,