Read Online The Silent Scream by Diane Hoh - Free Book Online

moved to the refrigerator for a glass of juice, she thought about the formal Linda had mentioned the night before. Hurry up and ask me to that dance, she ordered Ian silently. Time’s a-wastin’. A boy in her history class had been hanging around a lot lately. What if he asked her first? Would it be totally rotten to turn him down, hoping that Ian would ask her? And then what if Ian didn’t?
    “What did Maddie bring us yesterday?” Linda asked, lifting a blue cloth napkin to peer into the wicker picnic hamper sitting on the kitchen counter. “Gee, isn’t it great that she gets rid of her guilt about not moving in with us by baking goodies?”
    “What would I do without her?” Jon said gratefully, biting into a strawberry muffin from Maddie’s most recent care package.
    Laughing, Jess wondered where Cath was. Had she already left for school? Had she finished the essay rewrite?
    As if on cue, Cath appeared in the kitchen doorway. She looked terrible. Her eyes were shadowed with purplish raccoon-rings, her hair a tangle of dark waves hanging limply around her pale, strained face. She was wearing the same tan skirt and green blouse she’d worn the day before. The skirt was wrinkled, the blouse drooping over the waistband.
    It’s not just her clothes that looked wrinkled, Jess thought with a wave of compassion. Every inch of her looks wrinkled, as if she’d spent the night tumbling around in a clothes dryer.
    Cath waved a sheaf of white paper in the air. To Milo, she said, “I finished, just like I said I would. So you can forget about turning in that paper you stole from me.” Her smile was cold. “You wouldn’t want to be accused of cheating, would you? Although for someone like you, that probably wouldn’t be a first.” Aiming one last contemptuous glance in Milo’s direction, she hurried from the room.
    The front door slammed a moment later.
    Shaking his head in disgust, Milo got up, muttered, “That girl is crazy! I never went near her room,” and left the kitchen. Linda did the same. Their footsteps echoed through the house as they went upstairs.
    Jon followed a moment later.
    “Cath is so positive that Milo took her paper,” Jess said to Ian when they were alone. “She’s never going to forgive him. We’ll have to draw up battle lines to keep them away from each other.”
    Ian nodded. “What’s the quote? The one that goes, ‘United we stand, divided we fall’? Sounds like us, doesn’t it?”
    Jess agreed. We are living in a house divided, she thought dispiritedly. “I wonder if Milo ever did do his paper?”
    Ian, at the back door with an overflowing wastebasket in hand, asked, “You think he took Cath’s paper, don’t you?”
    She was saved from a reply by the peal of the front doorbell. Ian went out back with the trash and Jess ran into the hall to yank open the front door.
    A short, stocky young man in a military uniform stood before her, twirling his Army cap in his hands. His straw-colored hair was cut very short and neatly parted to one side. He had deep brown eyes that seemed sad to Jess, almost melancholy.
    But he smiled at her. “I’m Avery McKendrick,” he said. “I had a telephone conversation with Mrs. Coates a few weeks ago about picking up my sister’s trunk. She said it would be okay.”
    “McKendrick?” Jess echoed. McKendrick? As in … ?
    “Giselle was my sister,” he said quietly.
    “Oh, I’m … I’m sorry,” Jess stammered, “please come in.”
    He stepped inside. “Thanks. I’d have been here sooner, but I was stationed in the Philippines. I just came back to the States last week. Is Mrs. Coates in?”
    “No. No, she’s … she isn’t.” Jess searched for the right words. “You … you said you came for your sister’s trunk?”
    Avery McKendrick nodded. “It’s in the cellar. There was a guy in overalls outside … dark hair? He volunteered to go find the trunk for me. I’m not sure we can manage it alone, though.” He smiled sadly. “My