The Girl in the Wall Read Online Free Page A

off Abby so she can help me celebrate my birthday.
    I close my eyes as I think of Abby, with her timid brown eyes, fuzzy brown curls, and the rabbit I gave her when she turned three, Mr. Ears. She takes Mr. Ears with her everywhere, even though he’s stained and smells bad and Stella keeps trying to bribe her to take up with a sleeker toy. I think of the last time I saw her, two weeks ago, her eyes full of tears when she told me her mom was going away to a California spa less than two days after getting back from a three-week shopping spree in Paris. I took her up to my room and we had a tea party with Mr. Ears, complete with make-believe fairy cake and sparkle tea. It doesn’t take much to make Abby beam like the world is the greatest place ever and it kills me that her mom can’t do it more. But not the way it kills me to think of her being dropped off in the middle of this to take my place as a hostage.
    My stomach burns as I think about what I can do to stop this. There has to be
something
. I start walking, hoping that will help me think. The tunnels are dim but there are enough grates along the way that it’s never actually dark inside them, not unless all the lights in the house are off. With their chipping plaster walls the tunnels are about as wide as a doorway so they’re easy to navigate. The ceiling is low but high enough that someone a few inches taller than my five feet five inches could still stand upright. It goes without saying they are also dusty and full of cobwebs and mice droppings. My feet kick up small dust clouds as I go.
    My dad is such a neat freak he’d flip if he knew any part of his house looked like this. The thought comes from out of nowhere and hits me like a baseball bat. My dad
was
a neat freak. I can’t breathe. I put my head down and try to pull air into my lungs. This is not my first panic attack but they don’t really get easier. And there’s this thing in my belly, this wail or primal grief that I have to tamp down or it might destroy me. I breathe furiously, focusing my mind on this moment, on the need to put one foot in front of the other and start doing something. I can’t fall apart, not when Abby is going to be dropped off in the middle of this. I have to keep it together for her. After a few moments my breathing slows and I can move again.
    I walk straight back until I hit the stairs, then I go up and turn left. My bedroom is the third grate down. Some of the grates are in the hall and they look like grates for the heating system, wrought iron with carved flowers and leaves. But mine is like the one I climbed into—it’s the back of a fireplace. All of them have small metal latches so they can be easily opened and closed.
    My room is dark, with light spilling in through the half-open door. I open the grate as quietly as I can and step silently into the fireplace. Then I walk into the room and that’s when I realize I am not alone. Someone else is in here, someone dressed in cargo pants and a white T-shirt, and he turns when he hears me.

CHAPTER 3
Sera
    My insides are churning and my skin feels funny, like it doesn’t fit right. My mind is like a scratched DVD, playing one image, then suddenly skipping, out of order, to another. Mr. Barett bleeding on the floor. Bianca, her head a soggy mess of red and gray. The guys who look like soldiers guarding the doorways of the house I practically grew up in. And that awful man who reminds me of The Assassin from that old movie calmly telling us that we’ll get shot if we step out of the west wing. How did this night go from birthday party to hostage situation? It’s too much to take in, to understand, so my mind just keeps skipping back and forth from image to image.
    I hated Bianca so much these past nine months but her being killed is so much bigger than that. I can’t even think about her mom who always cheered wildly at her soccer games and her younger brother who had a shirt made with Bianca’s number on it. This is