The Forbidden Heart by V.C. Andrews Page B

at picking up some
     curse words and creating some very nasty images, in addition to becoming quite fluent
     in the language. Because of the way I looked when I spoke, my teachers suspected that
     what I was saying was inappropriate, so they got translations that I was sure turned
     their faces red, especially Mrs. Roster, my science teacher. She came down on anyone
     who used “damn.”
    I suppose if I listed the mothers who called to complain about me, the fathers who
     spoke to mon père complaining about my influence on their perfect daughters, and the three police arrests
     for shoplifting over the last two years, I could understand why both of my parents
     were feeling defeated, especially when they looked back at the years of disappointment.
    Five nights in these last two weeks, I had come home well after midnight. Twice I
     snuck out of the house when I had been “confined to quarters.” Papa actually used
     that terminology. He had tried to keep me contained by forbidding Mama to give me
     any money. Once in a while, she snuck me a few dollars, but for the most part, she
     was more afraid of defying him than I ever was. I had a stash of money that I instinctively
     knew I would need someday, so I didn’t touch any of it, and I was always trying to
     add to it.
    This particular day, I got caught stealing fifty dollars out of Carrie Duncan’s purse
     during P.E. I denied it, of course, but Carrie’s father had given her a twenty with
     a bad ink smear on one side, and that twenty was in my possession. I was suspended
     again and couldn’t return without both of my parents meeting with the dean. It looked
     very ominous. There could be an effort to have me sent to some other school or brought
     before a judge again, only this time with more determination to have me placed in
     a juvenile detention center or something.
    Two weeks before, I had met Steve Carson at the Columbus Circle mall. I saw him reading
     the cover of a novel in the bookstore. He looked very interested in it, and then he
     put it back on the rack. I thought he was a very good-looking guy, about six feet
     tall, with a swimmer’s build. He had soft, wavy light brown hair and patches of freckles
     on his cheeks but a look in his face that gave him a more mature expression. I prided
     myself on always being a good judge of character and personality. I knew how to read
     people’s eyes, the way they looked at other people, and the small movements they made
     with their lips. Innocence and insecurity were always easy for me to see, as was arrogance.
    I watched how Steve looked with interest at other people, skimming the surfaces of
     their faces and bodies just like someone who knew as much about people as I thought
     I did. He brought a smile to my face. Whenever I saw someone who interested me, I
     suddenly felt very good, as if there was some purpose to being born, after all, because
     most people bored me.
    I watched Steve walk away, and then I shoplifted the book he had been considering.
     It wasn’t difficult this time, because it fit so well in the inside pocket of the
     oversize man’s leather jacket I was wearing. Despite being caught at it three times,
     I was almost as good as a Las Vegas magician when it came to “now you see it, now
     you don’t.” I left the store right after he did, and when he stopped to look at some
     clothing in a window, I came up beside him and took out the book. I stood there looking
     at it, and then he looked at me with a smile of incredulity.
    “You just buy that book?” he asked.
    “Sorta,” I said.
    “Sorta? What’s that mean?”
    “Sorta means ‘sort of,’ ” I said, and he laughed. “Here,” I told him, handing it to
     him. He looked at it in my extended hand.
    “ ‘Here’? You want to give it to me? Don’t you want to read it?”
    “The last thing I read was a ticket for jaywalking, and you know how hard that is
     to get in New York City.”
    He laughed again, looked at the book