Gabrielle's Bully (Young Adult Romance) Read Free Page A

laugh was my reward. I went out the door, calling after me, “Come on, Babs. My mother will be here at four-thirty.”
    She said goodbye to Mike and trailed after me, coming to stand on the steps.
    There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Finally she said, “That was a rotten thing you just did. You should have seen poor Heathland’s face.”
    She didn’t have to tell me that. I knew it. I felt a flush of shame staining my skin. It didn’t make me feel any better to know that Barbara would never have done such a thing. She would have taken Jeff on in a minute. But, I thought, she also has the security of being Mike’s girl. Jeff wouldn’t persecute his buddy’s girlfriend.
    I was nobody’s girl. She couldn’t possibly understand.
    * * *
    All that night, I couldn’t seem to put the incident out of my mind.
    My mother noticed it, of course. She watched me push the food around on my plate at dinner, while Craig chattered and my father stole glances at the newspaper between bites. When I was helping her clear the table, she said, “Gabrielle, what is bothering you? Something’s wrong.”
    I have a lot of trouble keeping anything from my mother. She seems to see into me with x-ray eyes. It wasn’t long before I was pouring out the whole story.
    “Well,” she said when I was done, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, “you must be pretty ashamed of yourself.”
    I nodded miserably.
    “That’s something, at least. What you did wasn’t right, but you have the grace to feel bad about it.”
    That didn’t help much. “What do you think I should do?”
    She unplugged the electric percolator and started taking mugs out of the cabinet over the sink. “I think you should apologize to this boy.”
    Somehow I knew she would say that. The very thought of it made me go cold with nerves. How could I face him again?
    Mom saw my expression. She shrugged, reaching for the jar of sugar. “You asked for my opinion, and that’s it. But you have to do what you think is best.”
    I took my coffee into the den and sat staring at it until it grew cold. Then I got up and reached for my purse.
    My philosophy about doing something you don’t want to do is this: get it over with as soon as possible. If I waited until school on Monday this would be driving me crazy all weekend.
    I knew where Heathland lived. He took my bus, and I’d seen him get off at the entrance to the new condominium complex that had been built on the farmland behind the junior high. It was only a few blocks away.
    I got my jacket and gloves from the hall closet and called in through the kitchen door to my mother. “I’m going for a walk, Mom.”
    She may have guessed my intention, because she didn’t grill me, only said, “Be back by nine, Gaby.”
    “Okay.”
    The night was cold, and I walked fast, to warm up. As the wind cut into me I thought that I could have accomplished this mission over the phone if I could have gotten Heathland’s number from information. But I wasn’t sure of his street (the condos covered a big area), it was a new listing, and besides, it seemed to me that calling him was sneaking out of it. What I’d done deserved a person-to-person confrontation. Time to face the music, Gaby.
    The condominiums had a little guardhouse at the entrance. I supposed they screened the visitors passing through, but there was nobody in it. The guard must have been on his break.
    Shivering, I examined the rows of mailboxes clustered at the gate. There were about fifty of them. I patiently read each name painted on the side of each box, cursing my conscience which drove me to such lengths. Unless Heathland stepped off the bus every day into the Twilight Zone, the name had to be here.
    It was, in the third row. “H. Lindsay. 23 Zinnia.”
    There was a sort of signpost next to the guardhouse, which was really a map showing the layout of the complex. All the streets were named for flowers. Zinnia was the second on the left, crossing the main