Read Online Eye Candy by R.L. Stine - Free Book Online Page B

about looking the way I did?
    I needed a mom to explain, to guide me through it all. I couldn’t talk about it with Dad. And it was hard to talk about it with my friends.
    I know, I know. I should feel lucky to be tall and blond. Ann-Marie tells me how lucky I am nearly every day.
    But sometimes I just feel so awkward. Like people are judging me because . . . because I stand out.
    Boo hoo, right?
    Ann-Marie never lets me get away with feeling sorry for myself. And she’s right.
    But I feel sorry for myself on my birthday, and I have good reason. It’s been fourteen years. I still dream about that smashed birthday cake oozing yellow icing onto the street. And I still miss Mom.
    â€œSure, I’ll go out to dinner with you Monday night, Dad.”
    â€œYou will?” Such surprise in his voice.
    â€œYeah, why not? As long as we don’t talk about birthdays.”
    â€œI can’t believe my little girl is twenty-four. Hear me sighing. Sigh, sigh.”
    â€œYou’re still young, Dad. You’ve got your whole life behind you.”
    â€œOh, now you’re using
my
jokes?”
    â€œYeah. Pretty sad, huh?”
    â€œWell . . . I think if you . . .”
    â€œI’m losing you, Dad. You’re breaking up. You shouldn’t have bought the cheap phone. Dad? Hey, Dad?”
    â€œOh, did
you
want coffee, too?” Rita Belson pulled the cardboard coffee container from a paper bag and set it on her desk. “Sorry. I should have asked.”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I muttered.
    We’d been working together for over a year, and I think maybe in all that time she’d brought me coffee once or twice—both times, not what I’d ordered.
    Hostile?
    Yes, Rita was hostile. And she didn’t make much effort to cover it up.
    It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and I could have used a cup of coffee. I’d spent most of the day writing letters to authors and publishers and printers, boring stuff about contracts and payments and publishing schedules.
    Children’s publishing is not all bunny rabbits and FurryBears, believe me.
    Rita made a big deal of sifting through her stack of phone messages before sitting down at her desk to drink her coffee. She gets a lot of calls, most of them personal. She seems to have a lot of guys calling her, and she talks to them all every day.
    We share a room with four gray-walled cubicles. Across from us sit Edith, a little gray-haired woman who answers the phone, and Brill, Saralynn’s lanky, blond, efficient, and always fashionably dressed assistant. That means Rita and I are side by side, so I can hear every word she says on the phone.
    And a lot of it is about the “great sex” she had the night before.
    Whew.
    Of course, when Saralynn enters the room, Rita suddenly becomes all business on the phone. She usually pretends she’s discussing a manuscript with an author. I guess her many admirers understand what she’s doing.
    Saralynn never catches on. Rita has Saralynn totally snowed.
    Rita isn’t bad-looking. I can see why guys find her attractive. For one thing, she has a great body, and she shows it off well, mostly in designer stuff—TSE cashmere sweaters and scoop-necked T’s; short, pleated skirts over dark stockings; a gray pinstriped Armani suit that’s to die for.
    She has straight, black hair down to her collar around an oval face, big blue-gray eyes, a sexy smile with one dimple in her right cheek, and a little nip of a nose, cute as a button, obviously not her original.
    â€œGood job on this
Pioneer Girl
manuscript, Rita.” Saralynn walked quickly into the room and set the stack of pages on Rita’s desk. “The ending really works now.”
    Rita glanced at me before she turned to Saralynn. “Oh, thanks. It didn’t work at all when Charlene sent it in. And the middle was a mess. I had to rewrite the whole thing. I didn’t want to send it back to her again