Bloodchild Read Free Page A

to the football field. Already psyched up by the team's impressive winning record, the boys popped out vigorously, shouting after one another. The relatively small junior-senior high school, with a total population of fifteen hundred students, was sitting on top of a volcano of excitement that continually threatened to erupt. That day, the day before the division championship game, was a day filled with anticipation. Twice during the afternoon the high-school students broke out with the school cheer as they passed through the halls from class to class. She thought the excitement had even affected her teachers, putting more enthusiasm into their lectures and questions and more smiles on their faces.
    She remained to watch the players come out. With their shoulder pads and black-and-gold uniforms, most looked like clones. Some already wore their gold helmets, and as they appeared, the mid-October Upstate New York sun ignited them, making it look as if they each wore a crown of fire. Characteristically Teddy Becker appeared with his helmet in hand, his ebony hair still neatly styled, and lumbered along slowly, calmly, almost arrogantly, for he was the first-string quarterback. She waved and he stopped, holding his arms up to express his disappointment that she wasn't staying around to watch the practice.
    Every day for the past two weeks she had been lingering after school to watch Teddy practice or play; but today she had to hurry home, for her brother and her sister-in-law were bringing home their child. It was still difficult to believe that it was an adopted child and that all that had happened really had happened. She almost wished Harlan had never told her the truth. She probably wouldn't have figured it out, because when she had seen the baby in the hospital, she thought it looked so much like him.
    When Harlan had first told her that Dana was pregnant, Colleen felt mixed emotions. She was happy for them because she knew how much they wanted a child, but she couldn't help but wonder how the baby's arrival would change her own life. She had always felt obligated to them for taking her into their home, and she especially felt obligated to Dana, even though Dana rarely, if ever, made her feel uncomfortable or unwanted.
    They had a big enough house. It was a two-story, eight-room, light blue Colonial on Highland Avenue, a quiet, dead-end street in Old Centerville Station. The previous year Harlan had replaced the wooden siding with aluminum and had the two tall pillars in front refinished. They painted the white shutters a glossy white, and now, because he had replaced the roof shingles as well, the house looked brand-new.
    There were four rooms downstairs: the living room with a picture window facing the street, a dining room, the kitchen, and a den-office in the rear. All four bedrooms were upstairs. Even with the baby taking the large room in the west corner, there was still a guest room. Harlan and Dana had their own bathroom and Colleen had hers. Since she had come to live with her brother after their father's fatal heart attack, she had never felt she was crowding them. In fact, she couldn't think of one uncomfortable moment.
    It was painful to leave her old school, where she had made so many friends, but with her mother dead ten years, a victim of cancer, and now with her father deceased, she had no choice. She was just a senior in high school.
    Harlan had always seemed more like a father than a brother to her, anyway, because there was such an age difference between them. Her parents had had him when they were very young, and then they had tried to have another child, but her mother had had a miscarriage and the prospects of her having a successful pregnancy diminished. Her parents never gave up, however, and surprisingly, when Colleen's mother was in her early forties, she became pregnant with her. She was a change-of-life baby.
    Colleen always liked Dana because Dana never treated her like a child. Even before she