Read Online Stalker Girl by Rosemary Graham - Free Book Online

hooks. And they were small. It would be a few months before Carly would be able to make out the writing on the side of the truck, but the smiling creature underneath “Valenzano’s Veal” with its big black happy eyes was clearly just a baby, and no way would it be smiling if it knew what was inside the truck.
    One of the workers greeted Carly with a wink and a smile and a “Hey, sweetheart” as he hoisted one of the carcasses—a leg in each hand—onto a cart.
    It was a strange experience for Carly, who was five at the time and in love with animals. The man seemed so nice. And yet he was swinging this dead animal around like it was nothing. Like it had never been anything.
    She knew what “meatpacking” meant. She knew there were still working warehouses around. She’d been breathing in the tinny smell of blood and the stink of garbage trucks that collected the rotting discards, since moving in. But seeing that calf in that guy’s hands sent her over the edge, and Carly declared she would never again eat an animal.
    Isabelle, concerned about protein, tried to convince Carly to keep chicken or at least fish in her diet. But not eating animals didn’t feel like a choice to Carly. Nick had been there. He’d seen how that dead calf had affected Carly, and he took her side. He said he didn’t mind cooking and eating vegetarian. It would be healthier, anyway. So from that day on, they were a mostly meatless (almost) family.
    Carly hadn’t had a chance to talk to Nick alone since her mother dropped her news bomb, but they knew each other too well. From the guilty way he was avoiding eye contact, it was clear he knew that she knew.
    When neither of them answered, Jess tried again. “Why’s everyone in a bad mood?”
    “ I’m not in a bad mood,” Carly said.
    “Yes, you are. You’re not talking. Daddy’s not talking. Mama went to bed while it was still light out.”
    “Your mother has a headache, Jess,” Nick said. “And I have this show coming up. I’m sorry I’ve been distracted.”
    He looked up at Carly, like he was hoping for some help. But Carly didn’t offer any. She wasn’t going to take matters into her own hands and tell Jess herself, but she wasn’t going to pretend everything was just fine, either. She didn’t understand why Nick and her mother thought delaying the news was going to make it any easier for Jess. If anything, Carly thought, it was going to make things worse.
    When it was clear that Carly wasn’t going to help, Nick reverted to the foolproof Jess-distracting method. “So tell us about the play.”
    Jess was a budding playwright. She and her friend Rosie were hard at work on an original script for their second-grade class.
    “Well,” she said, homing in on an errant artichoke. “It’s about these girls. Actually they’re princesses who are on an adventure. They were kidnapped by these witches, but they escape and they have to find their way back to their castle before their father dies of sadness. See, his wife—their mother—died already, and now his daughters have been taken, and he’s just too sad.”
    “Wow. That does sound sad,” Carly said. Maybe Jess knew more than everyone thought. “What happened to their mother?”
    “Oh, she had a heart attack because she ate too many french fries from McDonald’s.”
    Carly laughed, relieved that the sad queen bore no resemblance to their mother. “They have McDonald’s in this kingdom?”
    “Yeah. Well, we call it Ye Olde Royal McDonald’s, but it’s basically the same thing. Too much fat. And stress. She was very stressed.”
    “Really? I didn’t think queens had that much stress in their lives. ’Cause of all the servants and stuff.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s what the stress was all about. Her servants were a lot to manage. And she was just—stressed. See, we’re trying to put in some positive messages.”
    “Maybe she should have done yoga.”
    “They didn’t have yoga back then.”
    “But they had