Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
“I’m guessing it wasn’t a ‘beautiful bond’ for you and your new sibling,” Sirex remarked.
Phoebe shook her head.
“No, not at all. I wanted to be friends—I looked up to Kylie. She was everything I’m not—blonde and skinny and popular. But she just hated me right from the start.”
“So what did she do to you that made you fear spiders?” Sirex asked softly.
Phoebe took another sip of hot coffee—this time she welcomed the burning. The physical pain was so much easier to deal with than the mental anguish that came with this particular memory.
“I went to bed one night when I was around ten or eleven,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Kylie and I hadn’t been sisters for long—our parents hadn’t even been married a whole year—and I remember I was still hoping that the two of us might get to be friends. Anyway, I went to sleep but in the middle of the night I woke up with this feeling like…” She cleared her throat—God it was hard to say this. “Like something was crawling on me—on my face, I mean.”
“Go on,” Sirex said softly, because Phoebe had stopped for a long moment. Finally she forced herself to keep talking.
“I reached up my hand to brush it off…but then I realized something was…was crawling on my hand too. Then I came a little more awake and I felt things crawling…crawling up my legs.”
A whole-body shiver racked her and she nearly spilled her coffee as she remembered that horrible night and all the nightmares that had followed.
“Your sister put spiders in your bed,” Sirex guessed.
“So many of them! It seemed like hundreds.” Phoebe couldn’t keep the horror out of her voice. “I sat up in bed and started screaming and my mom ran into the room. When she turned on the light, they were all over the place—all over me…all over my bed. It was really easy to see them because I had white sheets and a pale pink comforter.”
Just the memory made her want to throw up and she was glad that she hadn’t touched the breakfast he’d brought her.
“That must have been horrifying—especially since you were just a young child,” Sirex remarked.
“Horrifying isn’t the word—it traumatized me! I had to sleep with a pillow over my head for years afterwards because I was so afraid of anything crawling on my face.” She shook her head. “I found out later that Kylie had gotten all the boys in her class to collect spiders for her for weeks—she’d been saving them up until she had enough to really do it right.”
“This sister of yours sounds like a sociopath!” Sirex growled.
“That’s what my mom said.” Phoebe took another sip of coffee. “It was the first big fight she and my stepfather had. I remember hearing her tell him that something wasn’t right with Kylie.”
She could still hear her mother’s voice in her memory…
“What if one of those spiders had been a black widow or a brown recluse? Phoebe could be dead or in the hospital right now! What kind of child does something so cruel? Kylie needs help!”
“Give me a break—you’re blowing this all out of proportion!” her stepfather had growled back. “Kylie never meant to hurt anyone—she thought it would be funny prank, that’s all.”
“What’s ‘funny’ about pouring live spiders over a sleeping child?” her mother had demanded. “Why can’t you see there’s a serious problem here?”
“All I can see is you overreacting because somebody scared your ‘precious princess,’” her stepfather shot back. “Get over it—Phoebe is fine and I had a talk with Kylie. She won’t do it again. Case closed.”
“Only the case wasn’t closed,” Phoebe murmured.
“What?” Sirex asked, frowning.
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about the fight I heard my mom and stepfather having.” She shook her head. “The spider thing was just one of the ‘pranks’ Kylie pulled on me. She always thought it was funny to make me afraid.”
“She must have hurt you very deeply,” Sirex murmured.
“Why do you say that?” Phoebe looked up at him.
“Because of these.” He cupped her cheek in one hand and swiped at her cheek. “You’re crying.”
“I’m sorry!” Phoebe pulled away and swiped hastily at her eyes. “I didn’t mean to!”
“Why does crying make you so upset?” Sirex sounded honestly confused.
“It’s not just crying—it’s crying in front of you.” Phoebe sniffed. “You’re my mentor—I’m supposed to be proving how strong and brave I am. And now I’m crying for the second time in two days! It makes me weak.”
“Crying doesn’t make you weak in my eyes,” Sirex told her. “It lets me know that you’re feeling something deeply, which is good—I need to know your mental and emotional state.” Reaching out, he stroked a strand of hair out of her eyes. “It’s all right to show me your feelings, Phoebe. I prefer it if you do.”