Read Online Kindergarten Baby: A Novel by Cricket Rohman - Free Book Online Page B

Shawna together made Lindsey feel hollow, worthless, and sick to her stomach. Depression spread through her entire being like anesthesia before a surgical procedure. Except this time, when she awoke, nothing would be better. Nothing would be fixed. She’d be just another lonely, unneeded, unwanted woman, soon to be divorced.
    Her thoughts sank lower, to a darker, disjointed place where the present entwined with the past. Frightening scenes from her second foster home drifted in, and she saw her twelve-year-old self sitting at the top of the stairs, watching the men. Her foster dad’s friends had always shown up for a “boys’ night in” whenever her foster mom left for a “girls’ night out.” The little girl had wondered what all the commotion was about‌—‌the laughing, the whistling‌—‌since they were just watching the TV, so she’d snuck downstairs to take a peek, then gasped in shock when she saw the images of women‌—‌naked women doing nasty things: spreading their legs, touching themselves, shaking their tops and their bottoms. She stared in disbelief until one of the men noticed her.
    He took a step toward her, leering. “Bet your new girl’s almost ready to dance with a pole,” he told her foster father. Lindsey fled to her room and vowed never to sneak out again.
    The remembered images brought Shawna to mind, and against her will she pictured the tall, shapely redhead from the poster wrapped around a pole.
    Sleep was her only sanctuary, but it eluded her. She reached for an apple she’d set on the patio table, left over from her school lunch. The bright, shiny apple triggered Lindsey’s fairy tale button, pushed her into once-upon-a-time mode. She picked up the apple, declared it to be poison, and transformed herself into Snow White by taking a deep, satisfying bite. Another bite, and another, but the effects of the imaginary poison never set in.
    She chased the apple with another swig of wine. Tonight the wine would replace her poison apple.
    The unusual and extreme cold front was perfect for the night of the Winter Performance, but it wasn’t great for sitting in the backyard without the benefit of a sweater, let alone any winter wear. The temperature dropped rapidly, but Lindsey barely felt it. In fact, she welcomed the anesthetic quality of the bitter, cold air, and her mind gently toyed with the irony that she felt as cold and numb on the outside as she did on the inside. Her eyelids had become so heavy they wouldn’t open, and her body was still.
    Winter clouds quickly covered the starlight, and within an hour the temperature had dropped from 49 degrees to about 33 degrees. Lindsey didn’t feel the tiny, wet snowflakes as they touched her face, though she would have loved that. Snow was a rare treat in the desert. The sight of it usually brought indescribable delight to her heart. Not tonight. Tonight the flakes propelled Lindsey toward the darkest corners of her mind, and she drifted into a deeper level of sleep. The temperature dropped a few more degrees.
    An odd whistling sound broke through the coldness of her mind, coming closer, growing louder. What was that? It sounded like a young child trying to learn to whistle. Over and over the child tried, and she smiled in her sleep, admiring the dedication. The sound changed again, becoming a wolf whistle, the strong, masculine sound she associated with construction workers admiring women in tight, short skirts.
    She burst into consciousness, chilled to the bone, then panicked when she sensed the thin film of ice on her face. When she opened her eyes, it cracked like a facial mask left on too long. Disoriented and shaking with cold, she clawed the ice from her face, then stopped when she heard the whistling sound again. It was coming from under the lounge chair, she realized, but it was too dark for her to see. She tried to move, but her body was stiff from the cold. The noise changed back to sounding like a child’s voice, and