Читать книгу Shocking Pink - Erica Spindler, Erica Spindler - Страница 21

The next week passed in a disjointed, confusing blur for Julie. Her days were spent pretending to be a good daughter and a normal fifteen-year-old. Her nights were spent peering through the window of number twelve Mockingbird Lane, watching acts that alternately shocked, horrified and aroused her.

Julie lived in fear that her father would discover what she was doing; she struggled to deal with what she saw. One time Mr. X would be tender, even loving with Mrs. X, making love with her in the traditional way. The way Julie had dreamed of being made love to. The next he would be cruel. He would torment her with his indifference, he would make her crawl or beg. Those times, he would take her in whatever way or position he chose, no matter how painful.

He was the devil, Julie decided. She was watching the devil himself.

And he was seducing her.

Julie lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, too frightened to close her eyes. She feared if she did, her subconscious would take over and she would be once again transformed into Mrs. X.

She didn’t want to be Mrs. X. She didn’t want to enjoy … that.

But she did enjoy it. It was sick, yet she watched in fascination. She hated it, yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She couldn’t understand why Mrs. X allowed the man to treat her that way, yet she did understand.

Maybe that was what frightened her most.

Julie rolled onto her side, then her back once more. The sheets twisted around her legs, binding them, trapping her. She began to sweat, her heart to pound. She was afraid.

Something terrible was happening to her. Had happened to her. She bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t the same person she had been before the window and Mr. and Mrs. X. Her life wasn’t the same.

She knew things now. She was afraid for her future.

She was afraid she was like Mrs. X.

A cry bubbled up to her throat. She wanted to go back. She didn’t want to know what she knew. She didn’t want him to be in her brain anymore. She pressed her face to the pillow. She wanted to make it all go away.

And she was afraid, too, for Mrs. X. Tonight, Mr. X had been brutal. He had all but raped Mrs. X, then left her bound, gagged and blindfolded. Alone in the dark.

He had gone to the garage and his car, and he’d driven off.

She and Raven had waited thirty minutes; he hadn’t returned. Julie had suggested they go inside and free Mrs. X; Raven had scoffed. It was all part of their game, she had said. Julie worried too much.

Did she worry too much? Julie wondered. Or was Mrs. X still there? Now, hours later? Had he left her to die alone in that house, bound and blinded by the silk scarf? Had he left her that way and gone to get a weapon to kill her?

The dark, her fears, pressed in on her. Julie reached across to the bedside table and switched on her light, squinting against the sudden brightness. Next to the light, in a pretty flowered frame, was a picture of her, Andie and Raven. Julie reached for her glasses and slipped them on, then took the framed photo into her hands and gazed at it. The picture had been snapped last summer, when Andie’s folks had taken them all camping. They had their arms around each other, they were smiling.

Now, she could hardly look Andie in the eyes. Now, she and Raven hardly spoke. It was as if there was a glass wall separating the three of them; they could see one another but not touch, not connect. They didn’t laugh together, they didn’t whisper together, sharing their deepest, darkest secrets.

Now, they kept those secrets all to themselves.

It was tearing them apart. Tearing her apart. But as much as she longed to, Julie didn’t know how to stop it.