Read The Second Life of Abigail Walker for Free Online Page B

“They’re expensive.”
    The boy stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Do you come to this creek a lot?”
    â€œThis is the first time. I didn’t even know it was here,” Abby admitted.
    â€œI come here all the time,” the boy told her. “But I’m not allowed to cross over. It’s beyond the safe perimeters. I’ll get in a lot of trouble if I even think about it.”
    The boy’s name, it turned out, was Anders, and he was older than he looked. Abby would have guessed seven, but it turned out he was almost nine. They stood across from each other for a few minutes while Anders told her some things about himself: He was being homeschooled by his grandmother, he liked the Star Wars movies and books, but he didn’t like any Clone Wars stuff.
    Abby waited for Anders to pause, but he just kept going. He was like Gabe talking at the breakfast table about a hockey game he’d seen on TV the night before, cramming in every single fact there was to report.
    He was just starting to tell her about some science project he was doing, which involved separating groups of vertebrate animals into their different classes, when Wallace began to bark behind them. Something—or someone—was barreling down the path through the woods to the creek.
    They were chasing her? They were really out to get her? Abby panicked. “Someone’s after me!” she cried across the creek to Anders.
    Anders waved both of his arms in wild circles. “Get over on this side! The water’s hardly deep at all here—you can get across and run away!”
    Abby didn’t even know if it was Kristen and Georgia racing down the wooded path. It could have been some neighborhood kids. But Wallace howled and she thought maybe he knew something, so she splashed into the creek and crossed to the other side.
    â€œWhere can I go now?” she demanded after she’d scrambled up the bank.
    Anders grabbed her arm. “Up the hill—come on!”
    Together they ran away from the creek, through a jumble of brambles and bushes, up a craggy hill that seemed to go on forever, and finally they got to the top. Beyond the tree line was an open field.
    When they reached the field, Abby flopped down on her back, trying to catch her breath. Could a person’s lungs explode? She was pretty sure her lungs were about to explode. While she waited for that to happen, she wondered why some people could run for miles and not even breathe hard, and she couldn’t go twenty yards without feeling like the air was being sucked from her throat with a vacuum cleaner. Even Claudia, who was terrible at most sports, could run without collapsing at the finish line. But not tubby Abby.
    Anders sat down beside her. “Are you okay?”
    â€œI guess,” Abby told him, not 100 percent convinced. She sat up and examined her arms forscratches. “Except now I have to figure out how to get back home without getting caught.”
    â€œWho’s trying to catch you? Are you in trouble with the police?”
    â€œI’m in trouble with two very mean girls. That’s much worse than the police, believe me.”
    Anders seemed to think about that for a minute. “So, what can they do to you? The girls, I mean.”
    â€œWell, they can—” Abby paused. How could she explain to an almost nine-year-old boy the terrible things girls did? The secret, down-low, parents-never-figure-it-out, terrible things that girls did to you if you were too fat or too skinny or had pimples or wore the wrong kind of jeans.
    â€œThey can kill you,” she said after a moment. “Only, other people don’t know that you’re dead. Only you know, on the inside.”
    Anders stayed quiet for a long time after that. And then all he said was, “Yeah.”
    Wallace howled in the distance. When Abby looked up, she saw him across the field. “How did he get over there? Wasn’t