Read The Second Life of Abigail Walker for Free Online

she bought the lot, she’d make a garden out of the weeds. She’d give them all beautiful names she made up, like lapizuras azula , and put a pretty fence around them. And then she’d build a house that looked just right surrounded by weeds.
    What kind of house would that be, though? Abby pulled her drawing pad out of the cooler and set it on her lap. A tree house might be right for a yard full of weeds, only all the trees on this lot were at the edges. Could you have a tree house that stretched all the way across the yard, a tree house the size of a regular house? How would you get electricity to it? Abby definitely wanted electricity so she could watch TV and turn on lights at night.
    Maybe another kind of house, then, one built lower to the ground. Maybe a cabin with a hole built right in the center of the floor so that the weeds could grow inside. She squinted her eyes, imagining, and started to draw.
    After lunch, Abby brought three chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a paper napkin back to the chair with her, and the Field Guide to Birds of North America , which she had now renewed three times, in case any new species had flown into the yard at the tail end of summer. She’d been staring intently at a small, black bird with a red head and yellow eyes when she heard Kristen’s voice coming over the tops of the weeds.
    â€œWe both have to knock on the door,” Kristen said. “It would look weird if you were standing out here in the road.”
    â€œBut what if her mom answers the door?” Georgia’s voice replied. “How am I supposed to act all friendly and nice when basically I think her daughter is a piece of dirt?”
    â€œAll you have to do is stand there,” Kristen insisted. “I’ll do the talking.”
    Abby heard them crossing the road to her house. She heard the sound of gravel crunching under shoes. She heard the sound of feet stomping up her front steps. She ducked low in her chair, just in case they looked across the street. She was hidden behind a tree, but Kristen was the sort of person who could sniff out a hiding place in no time flat.
    The question was, who would answer the front door? Her father was working, and her mother had gone to meet her friend Mary Katherine for lunch. If Gabe answered, he’d yell Abby’s name up the stairs a couple of times, then shrug at Kristen and Georgia when she didn’t yell back. If they asked him where he thought she was, he’d shrug again and close the door.
    But if John answered the door, he might try to be helpful. John had always been nice to Claudia when she came over, unless he was with his friends. When he was with his friends, he seemed to feel like he had to roll his eyes a lot and call Abby and Claudia twerps and dweebs and ask them why they didn’t have boyfriends yet. Onhis own, he was friendly as long as they didn’t go into his room.
    After John called around for Abby, he might offer suggestions. Had they checked over at Mrs. Vann’s house? Sometimes on Saturdays Abby helped her sort her recycling. Or—and here he might look across the street and think for a moment—he’d seen her wandering around over there every once in a while. Maybe she was reading behind one of those trees.
    The only thing Abby knew for sure was that she couldn’t let them find her, even though she was probably just putting it off. Sooner or later they’d back her into a corner and—well, she didn’t know what they’d do. She was dead, Georgia had said, and even though Abby knew that was only a figure of speech, still, a group of girls could kill you in their way. They could text evil rumors about you and make everyone stop talking to you, as though you didn’t even exist. Abby had heard the stories.
    She quickly folded her beach chair and stuffed the field guide and her sketchbook and pencils into the cooler. The back of the lot ran up againsta low wooden fence, one