Red Heart Tattoo Read Free Page A

over the top of his glasses. “No tumbling.”
    Kelli wasn’t as bummed about the layoff as her mother. At the moment, she hurt all over and just wanted to go home.
    “She’s a fast healer,” Jane said.
    Dr. Trubey concentrated on the wrap. “Sprains take time to heal. Don’t push it.”
    Kelli was grateful for his intervention. He understood Jane Larson well.
    Her mother watched, hawklike, while Dr. Trubey wrapped Kelli’s wrist in gauze and Ace bandages. He sent them off with care instructions, a prescription for pain medication and a wave of his hand. It was after seven when Kelli eased back into the car. They hit thedrive-through at the pharmacy, waited for the pills. Kelli swallowed two as soon as she could. “Why don’t we grab a pizza and take it home,” Jane said.
    Her offer surprised Kelli. Her mother watched both of their weights vigilantly, so she almost never suggested pizza. “You must really feel sorry for me,” Kelli said.
    “Of course I feel sorry for you. You’re hurt.”
    And as a result, Kelli thought, she might lose her position on the squad. And Kelli knew how important the cheerleading squad was to her mother. Jane had been a cheerleader herself at Edison years before, and Kelli often thought she would still have liked to be one. High school—Jane’s glory days. “Pizza sounds good,” she said.
    There was no one waiting for them at home. Her parents had divorced when Kelli was a freshman, and her dad had moved to New York. She missed him. Her mother was a real estate agent, but the market was dead everywhere, so she was home more than usual and very discontented with life.
    “You’ll be back on top in no time,” Jane said, reaching across the console and squeezing Kelli’s good hand. Jane laughed. “Get it? On top?”
    “I get it, Mom,” Kelli said wearily. Kelli was the smallest person on the squad and always topped the human pyramid. It was one of the reasons Jane fussed at Kelli about weight control. Fat girls didn’t climb to the top.
    “I hope they catch the little perverts who did this,” Jane said. “You have any idea who it might have been?”
    “No idea.” Kelli leaned her aching head against the car’s headrest as the pills began to work and made her mellow. Still, she wanted to get home and talk to Mark. Her world
—their
world—was upside down and she needed him more than anything.

M organ moved the food around on her plate, anxious to get dinner over with and go up to her room. She was too wired on adrenaline to be hungry. Her parents sat at the table with her, none of them interested in food, it seemed. Her father had turned off all cell phones and put the home phone on the answering machine. Because the Friersons were two of only five attorneys in Grandville, their phones had rung continuously all evening. Morgan had listened to Paige and Hal tell callers, “It’s too soon to think about litigation, Mrs. So-and-so,” and, “We can’t blame the school just yet, Mr. Whatever-the-name.”
    Morgan speared a lima bean and asked, “So what happens now?”
    “The police will question people.”
    “The police!”
    “In this era of homeland security, explosions are taken seriously.”
    “It was fireworks,” Morgan insisted.
    “They didn’t combust without help.” Paige inserted her opinion. “Someone set them up and set them off. It was planned.”
    Morgan was still angry at the person or persons who had done it, but she wasn’t crazy about the police sniffing around. She wanted to find the culprits and throttle them. She had developed a plan for the school year, ideas and directions for her student council term—good ideas for projects and fund-raising. Now some idiot had interjected himself into the mix, and not in a good way. Her brain hurt from thinking about it. She’d dig around on Monday. Someone knew something.
    “Could this have been the work of a rival school?” her father asked.
    Their closest rival was Bonnerville, thirty miles