Monday's Child Read Free

from another planet in a far away galaxy.
    Aliens were particularly good at disguising their alienage, although there was usually something that gave them away. A fondness for reptile breakfasts or green blood or dissolving in the rain . . .
    Alien or not, the very last thing he wanted to do was get her mad at him.
    Again, a little voice in his head whispered. Don’t get her mad at you again.
    Kevin had been living dangerously lately. Sometimes he couldn’t help it.
    “You’re asking for it, Kevin,” his mother always said, and maybe she was right.
    On Monday, he’d tried to glue Jill’s books together, squirting practically a full container of Elmer’s Glue-All between her Reader and her math workbook, but the stuff didn’t have a chance to dry and all he’d wound up making was a mess.
    He was good at messes.
    At morning recess on Tuesday he’d accidentally on purpose kicked a soccer ball directly at her while she was playing hopscotch, waiting until her back was to him, but she’d jumped aside at the last moment and then gave him a look that had made his insides churn.
    And yesterday, when everyone was lining up to go to the auditorium for the Easter pageant rehearsal, he shuffled his feet across the carpet and then reached out to touch Jill, giving her a jolt of static electricity.
    Jill looked as though she might like to give him a charge. Something dark and dangerous was going on behind her eyes.
    But Miss Appleton had come along the line just then, telling everyone to face the front, stop talking, and act like young ladies and gentlemen.
    Saved!
    There wouldn’t always be someone coming along to save him, he knew, and he also knew when he was treading on thin ice. As the youngest in a family of five boys, he’d developed a fine sense of when he’d reached that point beyond which retribution waited.
    Knowing when to stop was the only thing that had kept his brothers from killing him, and it was what kept his hands in his pockets now.
    Jill Baker frightened him.
    The thing was, a part of him liked being scared. He liked the feeling he got when the hair on his arms stood up or when his heart raced and ice water seemed to flow through his veins.
    He enjoyed the sensations of fear.
    Even just standing this close to her made his muscles tingle, and he had a kind of fluttering in his stomach. Neither were unpleasant feelings.
    Once he’d tried to tell some of the other guys how he felt and they’d misunderstood.
    “Kevin loves Jill, Kevin loves Jill,” they taunted.
    A couple of the girls in his class had overheard and they joined in the torment, probably because Jill was absent that day and they felt safe. Before long, all the kids on the playground were singing:
    “Kevin and Jill, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes sister in a baby carriage.”
    It was one of the few times in his life that he’d been glad when recess was over.
    He didn’t love her, or any girl.
    In fact, of all the girls he didn’t love, he didn’t love Jill more than any of them.
    His mother and father called Jill a heartbreaker, and his brothers teased him about her, because they said she was pretty and when she grew up, watch out.
    Kevin would die before he’d admit it, but he knew they were right, except he thought she was pretty in the way that certain spiders were. Being pretty didn’t make them any less deadly.
    As for the part about being a heartbreaker, that he could believe.
    He often wondered, if he made her mad enough, would she pull his heart out of his chest and break it before his dying eyes?
    A shiver ran up his spine.
    “Kevin,” a voice said from behind him.
    Startled, he jumped and, off-balance with his hands still in his pockets, fell against the wall. He struck his left shoulder and elbow hard, bringing sudden tears to his eyes.
    Jill turned from the computer, her hands resting in her lap.
    Miss Appleton looked at him and shook her head. “Honestly, Kevin.