Read Online The Midnight Dancers: A Fairy Tale Retold by Regina Doman - Free Book Online Page B

gas, my dad will never notice I was out.”
    “So your parents don’t know what you’re up to,” she said with a smile.
    “Uh…no.” He swallowed.
    “Well,” Rachel teased, knowing she had him. “ I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me.”
    She sounded joking, but she had a feeling that Keith picked up on the threat, and realized he had made a big mistake.
    “Nah, I’d never tell on you,” he said, a bit indignantly. He looked around. “Like Taylor said, this is a really neat… beach you have here.”
    Keith scrambled to his feet and hurried over to Prisca, who was standing with the other boys, shrugging her shoulders, fluttering her eyelashes, and giggling to her heart’s content.
    Rachel wanted to laugh. So much for Dad’s spy. But instead she walked down to the water where the youngest girls, who had quickly tired of the conversations, were splashing around. She started a splashing game with them, and then Taylor joined in. It was fun, but Rachel wasn’t anxious to get too wet, so after a few minutes, she sat down on a rock and Taylor sat next to her. As they talked, Melanie slipped over to sit with them, putting her head on Rachel’s shoulder.   
    After about a quarter hour, Rachel looked at Taylor and said coaxingly, “Taylor, take us for a boat ride.”
    Taylor said, hesitantly, “Sure, but are you all going to come?”
    “Just me and Melanie and Cheryl,” Rachel said. “The rest can stay here or go with Keith.”
    “Man, Alan should have brought his family’s boat. I told him he should have. It’s huge.”
    “He should have,” exclaimed Rachel, disappointed.
    “Well… maybe I can ask him to bring it tomorrow.”
    “Good.” She stood up. “Come on, Cheryl! Melanie and I are going for a boat ride.”
    Rachel had picked Cheryl deliberately because she sensed the older girl was irritated by the twins’ flirting with boys who were Cheryl’s classmates. Also, Rachel calculated that Cheryl would hesitate to go on a boat ride at first, but would probably enjoy it once she got out there. A small outing like this was the perfect time to persuade her conservative stepsister that they had nothing to fear.
    Cheryl grudgingly joined them, after Taylor asked her to, and Melanie seemed happy so long as she was accompanying Rachel. They clambered into the swaying boat and settled themselves. Cheryl asked for, and got, a life jacket for herself and Melanie, but Rachel sat up front in the boat next to Taylor, letting the wind stream around her neck and through her hair as the powerful engine gunned to life and pulled her away. 
    For the next half hour she lived in the rush of the wind and water, and by the time they headed back towards the shore, she was yearning for more. Only the need to keep their secret safe impelled her back home.
    “Never been boating? Well, what have you been doing then?” The quotation came back to her—where had she heard that?  She realized, disconcerted, that she had heard it that evening, from Paul Fester.
    “Taylor,” she said, as he let the boat drift back towards shore. “You have to tell the other guys that they can’t let on to anyone that they saw us here. Right?”
    “Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll make sure I’ll tell them,” Taylor said, seriously.
    “Keith won’t chicken out, will he?”
    “He better not, or he’ll get us all in trouble,” Taylor said. “Are you worried that your dad will try to crack him?”
    “Yeah, sort of,” Rachel said. “I mean, you know my dad. General Patton.”
    “He’s been sounding out the guys in Bible group about what you girls have been up to. I was the only one who knew what he was getting at, and you know I won’t tell.” He grinned. “And now that the rest of them have been out here, I doubt they’re going to tell him either. I mean, we’d have to admit to Colonel ‘Patton’ that we were out with his daughters at night—alone!”
    “Yeah, right!” Rachel laughed. This was exactly as she had