The Rise of Rachel Stark Read Free

that.
    Rachel told her Mom and Dad: To get to the
uterus, where the fetus is, the wire hanger, or the bicycle spoke,
or the umbrella spoke, has to pass through a tiny opening in the
cervix. A back-alley abortionist is going into that area blind, and
if she doesn't find that opening, she could easily puncture the
uterus and maybe sever one of the arteries there, arteries that
pump a lot of blood.
    They told her to stop talking like
that.
    Women die. They bleed to death.
    And even if the abortionist does find that
small opening in the cervix, she has to know how to exert the right
amount of force to get the wire hanger into the uterus. Too much
force also could puncture the uterus and cause serious, even fatal,
bleeding.
    They told her to stop talking like
that.
    Rachel told her parents: Even if the wire
hanger manages to get safely into the uterus, she would be at high
risk of dying from an infection in a matter of days. Wire hangers
are not sterile. They are not even clean.
    They told her to stop talking like
that.
    So she did. Like always.
    She wrote a song instead. Wrote it in her
head, like she did with many of the songs she wrote. When she was
done, she sang it to herself in a soft, whispery voice as she
played her guitar. It was a sweet song, she thought. Not at all
like life.

Chapter
Three
    The Best Laid Plans …
    The Galaxie, flexing its young muscles,
sprinted up Cemetery Road like a frightened fawn.
    "Look," Sheldon said. "We have to make a plan.
What we're going to do once we get there. We're going to be there
pretty soon."
    "Yeah," Bull said. "Any ideas,
Jimmy?"
    "Well," Jimmy said. "First, we're going to
have to park some distance away from their trailer, so they won't
see or hear our car coming up the driveway."
    "Right," Bull said.
    "So then we walk to the trailer. If there's a
strange vehicle there – I think that old black Ford pickup and that
1952 Plymouth are the only vehicles the Stark family has,
right?"
    "Yep, right," Tabby said.
    "OK, if there's a strange vehicle there I'll
take down the license number, year, make and model, color,
etcetera," Sheldon said.
    "OK, great," Jimmy said. "Then Bull, you bang
on the door as loud as you can and yell 'police!' "
    "OK," Bull said. "And if they don't answer
right away, we'll break the door down."
    Silence.
    "This is so scary, guys," Tabby said. "So
scary."
    "Yes, it is scary, I'll admit," Sheldon said.
"But remember, we have somebody inside, Rodney, who is on our side.
He knows we're coming. At least I'm pretty sure he knows. And if
he's in the kids' bedroom, which I absolutely think he would be,
you know, keeping the little kids quiet and out of the way, if they
aren't already asleep. Anyway, he's a lot closer to the front door
than the people in the parents' bedroom at the other end of the
trailer. He's going to open that front door for us immediately.
Does that sound right, Tabby?"
    "Yes, but then what?" Tabby asked.
    "Then Rodney tells us what's going on,"
Sheldon said, "and … and then we go from there."
    He paused.
    "We don't know exactly what we're going to run
into, it's true. I wish we did, but we don't. That's a fact. I
mean, we could run into an entirely different set of conditions.
You know, like maybe people aren't going to be where we think
they're going to be. Or maybe they told Rodney to take the little
kids and go somewhere. We just don't know. We're just going to have
to think on our feet, and we're going to have to think
fast."
    "But our objective is simple," Jimmy said,
"and it is clear. If there is anything going on in the parents'
bedroom, or wherever Rachel is, we are going to go in there and put
a halt to it. Any. Way. We. Can. If that means physical violence,
then so be it. We have three big guys, maybe four if we count
Rodney. At most, there will be two guys in that bedroom, Benjamin
Stark, who might or might not stand in our way, and one other guy,
the guy doing the abortion, again who might or might not give us
trouble. But I'm