Read Online Then I Met My Sister by Christine Hurley Deriso - Free Book Online Page B

dishwasher is pretty quiet for the first ten minutes or so, when it’s filling up with water. But then, the water starts churning and the motor sounds like bullfrogs on speed. That’s when I make my move, slipping downstairs and out the sliding glass doors. From that point, I walk across the deck and tiptoe down the stairs into the back yard, Then all I have to do is duck when I pass Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom window, unlatch the gate, run down the side of the yard, and walk a block down the street, where Chris is waiting at the stop sign to pick me up.
Dad has caught me a couple of times sneaking back in, but he just shakes his head. Who is Dad to lecture me about sneaking around?
Chris and I are tossing around the M word. Crazy, I know. I didn’t even have my first date until eleven months ago! While all my friends were flirting and pairing up from, like, seventh grade on, I was starting petitions to improve crosswalk signage. So who knew I’d fall so hard and so fast for my first real boyfriend? He wants to go into his dad’s welding business as soon as we graduate, so if I stay in town for college, we can get M’d right away. (I can’t even bring myself to write down the word!) Chris says the M word stands for ‘maybe later,’ the stinker. But he’s just kidding. Did I mention that Chris is the greatest guy in the free world? God, I love him so much.
In other news, Mom has blackmailed me into seeing a shrink. She said she’ll take my car away if I don’t. My first appointment is Monday. I think I’ll mess with his mind by telling him I talk to trees and can make things spontaneously combust. No need to get into the messy truth that Mom is a control freak who thinks she can live my life.
She’ll love the whole M plan. Maybe Chris and I will even live in a trailer. We’ll have barbecues on Saturday nights and serve squirrel. She can wear her pearls.
I wonder if she bribed the shrink to install a computer chip in my head so she can program my life.
    I shake my head slowly as I prop myself up on my elbow. Marriage? At seventeen? To a loser she had to sneak out of the house to see? No wonder Mom hired a shrink.
    I know Mom’s a control freak, Shannon, I think. Nobody can relate to that better than I can. But, God, you’re an idiot. No offense. And while I’ve got your attention … would it kill you to spell out exactly what’s up with Dad?
    Would it kill you. I’ve got to watch my figures of speech.

Twelve
    Ah- choo.
    I stab the stem of a crocus, pinning it into a foam wreath with gleeful intensity. Take that, you sneeze-maker.
    Aunt Nic walks back to the work table and glances anxiously. “Oh, Summer, honey … all I need you to do is bring the flowers from the fridge to the work table. I’ll do the arranging.”
    I laugh at her. “Don’t worry, Aunt Nic, I wasn’t going all Better Homes and Garden on you. I was just goofing around.”
    She smiles. “I’m sure you’ll be helping me arrange flowers in no time. But it’s only your second day.”
    I unpin the crocus from the wreath and toss it back into a pile with the others. “A girl can dream,” I say.
    What a place to spend my first official day of summer: Allergy Alley.
    I don’t really mind. I’ve always loved my Aunt Nic, and I guess there are worse things than hanging out with crocuses (croci?), even if they do assault my histamines.
    Still, I can’t get Shannon’s journal off my mind. A thousand questions float through my head, and I wonder which ones Aunt Nic can answer. I decide to ask her the safest of them—which is still one of the questions Mr. Kibbits wouldn’t answer.
    “Did Shannon hate Mom?” I ask.
    Aunt Nic picks up a crocus and fingers its satiny stem.
    “No,” she says in a small but firm voice. “She loved her.”
    I suck in my lips. “She’s got a real hate-fest going on in her journal.”
    Aunt Nic smiles wryly. “I kind of got that gist from the first couple of pages. That’s why I couldn’t show it to