The Last King of Texas - By Rick Riordan Page 0,62

loops, perfectly slanted, page after page written in the same golden brown ink. It was the kind of cursive that would drive handwriting analysts crazy because it was completely devoid of anomalies. Sandra didn't believe in beginnings. No Dear Diary or I haven't written in a while or Today I have something special to tell you. No dates on the entries or signatures at the end. It was difficult to tell where one entry started and the next stopped. Sandra merely indented for the next paragraph and started writing.

This to Sylvia Plath.

I want to cut your thumb a few more times.

I want to leave off the gauze and

make you squeeze limes instead.

A thrill?

Look at my brother's leg.

Tell me what part of him is white.

Only what the gun splashed open, melted into a star,

smoothed out by a year with demons so that I could live.

Don't impress me with your slip of a knife.

Don't talk to me about soldiers.

No one ever bought your life with an open wound.

Your typical light verse from a seventeen-year-old girl.

Several pages later.

I should have stayed inside this afternoon. The letter came.

Acceptance. Full scholarship. Grandmother and I set a jar of raspberry sun tea under the apple tree and we danced. Grandmother with her cane and all. We laughed at the chickens. I thought of college. And then the car in the gravel drive and Hector walked up with Him. After two years. He was only larger, no less or more frightening. A devil like that can have only His fixed amount of horror, never more or less than 100% - as a child, as a man. I should have stayed inside. I knew His look, the weighing He did. I was naked on a scale. I took my letter and I went inside. My grandmother became old again, hobbling alongside and muttering encouragement about college, but I just felt His eyes on my back. I knew what He was thinking. I should have stayed inside.

The other entries were equally intense. Tiring to read, unsatisfying. They told me about Sandra Mara like an intravenous feeding.

I skipped to the end and read the last paragraph.

How could a few minutes in a hallway shake me so much? He's so unexpected. I still can't write about it without catching my breath. Recognition in a dozen words, maybe less. He'd been standing in the same shadows as I, knew them instantly.

He kissed me today.

I closed the journal. Then I sat watching the light die in the crape myrtle outside the kitchen window.

When the light was gone, I went out to my car.

Fifteen minutes later I was pulling up in front of RideWorks, Inc.

It wasn't any prettier than it had been two nights before, but it was a hell of a lot more crowded. Rusted pickup trucks and low-rider Chevies lined the curb. The chain-link gate was open and the Super-Whirl Erainya and I had seen in pieces in the warehouse on Tuesday was now fully assembled in the yard, workers buzzing around it. The ride's giant metal arms were fully extended, lit with purple and yellow bulbs like dingo balls.

I walked through the gates, one hand in my pocket, the other slapping Sandra Mara's journal against my thigh. When I caught the eye of a worker, I smiled amiably, pointed toward the office door. "Del?"

The worker had a Fu Manchu mustache and a grimy face. On his head was a metal welder's visor the size of a snowboard. He considered my question, shrugged, then went back to his cigarette.

I went up the office steps, past the carousel animals, into the Room of Infinite Gimme Caps. No one was passed out on the secretary's desk this time. Del's office door was open. The restroom door at the other end of the reception area was closed and muffled thumping noises were coming from behind it.

I poked my head into Del's office.

Empty. Jeremiah Brandon smiled coldly at me from the 1940s photograph on the wall, daring me to trespass, double-daring me to sit at his son's desk.

"Screw you, Jerry," I told him.

I made myself comfortable and waited.

A few minutes later, I heard water running in the bathroom. Del's voice muttered something. Then the bathroom door opened and Rita the secretary came out, followed by Del.

Rita had her purse on her shoulder and trotted straight out the door, dabbing her lipstick as she went. Del walked toward the office. He didn't see me until he got in the doorway. Then he turned a lovely