the deadly sister excerpt

7/31/2019 The Deadly Sister Excerpt

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SCHOLASTIC INC.New York Toronto London Auckland

Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

THEDEADLYS

ISTER

ELIOT SCHREFER


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If you purchased this book without

a cover, you should be aware thatthis book is stolen property. It wasreported as unsold and destroyed tothe publisher, and neither the authornor the publisher has received anypayment for this stripped book.

No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form or

by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording, or otherwise,without written permission of thepublisher. For information regardingpermission, write to Scholastic Inc.,Attention: Permissions Department,557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

This book was originally published in

hardcover by Scholastic Press in 2010.

ISBN 978-0-545-16575-4

Copyright 2010 by Eliot Schrefer.All rights reserved. Published byScholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and asso-ciated logos are trademarks and/orregistered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 13 14 15 16 17/0Printed in the U.S.A. 40First paperback printing, June 2012

The text type was set in Palatino.Book design by Elizabeth B. Parisi


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SATUR DAY, M AY 11

For D a v i d Le v i t ha n


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Ihave always been the one to protect my sister.

I protected her when she was in fourth grade, standing

down the bully who used to steal her lunch. I protected her

when she was in seventh grade, yanking the hair of the girl

who kept writing sluton her locker. I protected her when she

was in eighth grade, lying to Mom and Dad when she stayed

out all night. I protected her when she was in ninth grade,

hiding the fact that she stole my homecoming dress money,

working an extra shift to quietly earn it back. Every time my

parents kicked her out, I found her and brought her home. Her

behavior and her attitude kept getting worse, and each rescue

got harder to pull off, but I never gave up. Shed been my bestfriend since she was born, and that never stopped mattering.

She was so cute when she was little. No one could stop

gushing about her, our parents least of all. She was the focus

of every dinner party; old ladies in grocery stores called

her an angel; strangers would start conversations with her

when shed peer at them over the backs of restaurant booths.

She was the spotlight sister, and I was the shadow sister. She

started adventures. I cleaned them up once they became

disasters.

Shed always been easily distracted, and as soon as she

started school, the diagnoses began. ADHD, that kind ofthing. Before then, my protectiveness had been fierce and

uncomplicated. I told her Id do anything for her, and her

face would get all serious and she would solemnly repeat


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the words back to me. But a cold little barrier went up once

doctors got involved. She was still the same sister Id loved

so much, and I still knew instinctively what she was think-ing, but I stopped knowing what she was feeling. She was

just as fiercely a part of me, but I was dazzled by her. I

turned from an older sister to one of those mother cats you

see raising a puppy, stubbornly blind to the core differences

and exhausted by a creature shes driven to help and yet

cant understand.

In the beginning, the drugs she took were all prescribed

until my parents thought the psychiatrists were overdoing it

and cut back. Thats when she started buying her own. At

first, she got more of the drugs shed already been taking,

the ones she hoped would make her normal. Then she startedbuying any drug that made her feel good. And with these

new drugs came new friends and new disasters.

She slammed her car into a light pole. The police found

her partying in a construction site late at night, high out

of her mind. When the school threatened academic expul-

sion, I vowed to find her a tutor so she could get her GED. I

lied to our parents about where she got the wad of rolled-up

bills they discovered in her messenger bag. I kept quiet when

she pawned the china our grandmother had left our parents;

they wouldnt know it was gone until they tried to set the

table next Thanksgiving. Every secure thing she pried up inour lives, I quietly followed behind and glued it back down.

I might have been able to protect her forever.

Until Jefferson Andrews showed up dead.


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SATURDAY, MAY 11


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1.

I

found his body during my Saturday run. Id been doing

a little training so I might have a prayer of making

Vanderbilts soccer team when I started in the fall. I

paused a few miles in to let my dog, Cody, catch up. Once

she did, she started to sniff some low-hanging branches. I

stroked the wiry fur between her ears and was surprised to

find her alert, staring somewhere between the razor fronds

of low palms and then down to the river. I placed my hands

on either side of her snout and tried to force her to lookinto my eyes. But Cody stayed rigid, kept looking toward

the river.

When I asked her what was wrong, she started growling.

Scrambling to the bottom of that ravine was the last thing

I wanted to do. But as soon as I let go of her, Cody disap-

peared in that direction. What else could I do but follow?

As I vaulted a fallen tree, slick green fungus rubbing

onto my sweatshirt, a crashing noise came from a thicket

below. I spotted Cody running the last few yards to the river-

bank. Thered been an explosive thunderstorm the night

before, and the river was surging a foot higher than usual;grasses and the bases of small trees were all underwater.

Cody barked at something downriver, near a spot everyone

at school called the Bend.


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After Id gone a few feet, I saw a bright orange wind-

breaker, blue stripes at the elbows. It was mostly submerged,

but the sleeves were hitched on to an exposed root, the jacketpuffy and full of water and mud.

I edged around the riverbank to get a better view. It

sounds stupid, but I called out Hello? I guess to see if

anyone was around and watching.

Cody began to bark again, sharp rhythmic lashes in the

still air. I stalled, then got close enough to confirm that in

the jacket was a body.

I put my hand over my mouth. The scene seemed both

real and unreal. Done and undone. Happening and not

really happening.

I didnt want to look any closer. But I had to.It was Jefferson Andrews, unmistakably. His jawline

angled toward the sky. His thick, curly hair tangled around

his face.

But he wasnt saying anything.

He wasnt breathing.

He was the opposite of alive. A word I took a moment to

get to, because with it came the full reality.

Dead.

A surge in the current buckled me. Shaking with cold

and horror, I half swam, half dragged myself to his side. His

face was so pale that no blood could possibly be flowing inhim. A thick scab mottled his hair, sent crimson tendrils

along his forehead. He had bled heavily before he died. He


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might have been dead before he hit the water, even. I went

into emergency mode, forcing myself to be calm and distant,

like a veteran doctor able to handle the sight of any body. Ibent in closer. Whispered his name. Got no reply.

The river had parted the windbreaker. Waves pulled at

the stray black hairs at the base of his muscular throat;

grit from the riverbed speckled his flesh black and red. I

wanted to reach out and wipe away the dirt, and almost

touched my fingers to his dead skin. He was still hand-

some, just . . . tired. He looked tired beyond the range of

the living. Then I saw that the speckles were fire ants. One

had its pincers in the smooth plane below his cheekbone,

slashing through the water-softened flesh. I looked down

instinctively and saw ants swarming my feet. They were bit-ing my ankles, where my wet socks had fallen down. I didnt

feel them.

I didnt know whether to leave him or pull him onto the

shore. The humane thing to do would have been to bring him

onto land. But already I was thinking in terms of evidence.

Plus, it was so hard to see him like this. Dead like this.

Handsome boys take hits in baseball games, twist and crum-

ple to the roar of a disbelieving crowd. They get cancerous

blood and inspire vigils around the flagpole. Theyre last

seen waving out of sunroofs, punch cups in hand. They run

out of strength trying to bust in the windows of sinkingcars. Heavy-limbed and straight-backed, they take flights in

camouflaged planes and never return.


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I couldnt help but think: Boys like Jefferson dont die like

this.Slammed on the head, left to bleed and drown.

The horizon narrowed, and all I could see was the rockysoil where Cody paced, her barks unrelenting.

Something there caught my eye. Half embedded in the

mud, an old phone, pink with edges rubbed gray. Crowned

by a telltale puffy kitten sticker.

My sisters phone.

I should say that I wasnt entirely surprised to find it. I

knew shed come to this area last night. I knew shed been

looking for Jefferson. Shed rushed off as soon as Id told her

Id heard he was meeting up with some girl here.

Shed made a big mistake going. And even bigger mis-

takes after, it seemed.Since Jefferson was dead . . .

And my sister had been here . . .

I knew what conclusion people would reach.

I splashed across the river, quick gasping screams coming

from my mouth. I grabbed the phone and scrambled up the

side of the ravine, my muddy sneakers dragging through

the underbrush. My dog was running circles around me.

Tight, protective, hysterical.

I knew Jefferson should have been my priority.

But he was already dead.

Maya, though Maya was alive.And in trouble.

It was time for me to play the protector again. It was time

for me to go through the motions of saving her.


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Because I had to. I simply had to.

Her phone was at the scene of the crime, but no one had

seen it there but me. How could she be so stupid as to leaveit? I remembered what shed been like last night, drugged

and emotional, totally out of her mind. She was probably

holed up somewhere now, in a park or on the street. Not

knowing who to turn to, her phone and all the numbers in

it gone.

I had to find her.

She couldnt refuse my help this time.

I was all she had left.

the deadly sister excerpt

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