Read The Stranger for Free Online Page A

and parents and food and music.
    Her sister did not infuriate her. Jamie actually seemed beautiful and even worthy. She was alive and giggling and pesky, which was how little sisters are meant to be. What did Jamie have to do with caves and monsters?
    Nicoletta had always told her family everything. Other girls who said they could not communicate with their families confused Nicoletta. What could they mean? Nicoletta simply arrived home from school and started talking. So did Jamie. So did Mother and Dad. Not communicate?
    For the first time in her life, she did not communicate.
    She did not tell them about the quiet lane, the staring stone, the straight path, the descending cave. As for the creature who brought her up from the depths, by the time she had reached home, she could no longer believe in him herself. He could have been nothing but an hallucination. She had not known her imagination was so active; in fact, Nicoletta thought of herself as having little or no imagination.
    Such a thing could not have happened, and therefore it had not happened.
    And so she remained silent, and shared none of it, and it swelled in her mind, filling her with confusion and disbelief.
    Several times she drew a deep breath to begin the story somewhere. Each time she looked away and said nothing. She did not want a lecture on safety. Safety alone could consume weeks of scolding. Just the idea of Nicoletta walking alone into an unknown woods would outrage her parents. But when she told them she walked straight into an abandoned mine shaft—well, please.
    But what kind of mine could it have been? Who had mined it? Who had smoothed those lovely walls, and what mineral caused the elegant glow?
    A monster lives in it, she imagined herself saying to her father. The monster has cave skin, sand skin, rock skin. It has calcified leaves for hair and crumbling stones for fingers.
    It occurred to Nicoletta that her family might just laugh.
    She did not want anybody laughing at the creature. It had saved her. It had carried her out.
    And yet—she wanted to talk about it. She was a talker and a sharer by nature.
    And more than anything, she wanted to go back.
    On that very first evening, sitting quietly at the dining table—while Jamie did geography homework and Nicoletta pretended to do algebra—while her mother balanced the checkbook and her father finished the newspaper—Nicoletta thought— I want to go back.
    Jethro was familiar with the path. Surely he had followed it to its end at least once. Jethro would not have flinched from entering that shining cavern. He would have walked in as she had.
    That’s why Jethro didn’t want me to follow him any farther, she thought. He’s met the monster, too! The monster asked Jethro never to tell either!
    In school tomorrow she would ask him about it. She would see if his eyes flickered when she said “cave.” It would not be breaking a promise if you talked with a person who already knew.
    When the phone rang and it was Christo, Nicoletta could hardly remember who that was. She could barely remember Madrigals, her group of friends and her great loss. Christo wanted to know what color dress she would wear. Nicoletta actually said, “Wear to what?”
    Christo laughed uneasily. “The dance Friday, Nicoletta.”
    She detested rudeness in people. She was ashamed of herself for not having her thoughts where they belonged. Quickly she said, “I was kidding. I’m sorry. It was dumb. I have this lovely pale pink dress. Are you getting me flowers? I adore flowers.”
    Nobody had ever given her flowers. Why was she implying that she had had the honor often?
    Christo said his mother was recommending white. Roses or carnations.
    Nicoletta said she would love white roses.
    But before her eyes was the blackness of caves.
    And inside her mind was a slipperiness. She had a secret now, she who had never had a secret. The secret wanted to be in the front of her mind, consuming her thoughts. She had to push it to