Broken Wings by V. C. Andrews Page A

long, I thought she didn’t believe I was asleep. Finally, she closed it. I heard them giggling and then, a little while later, I heard them in his bedroom. It wasn’t hard to realize what they were doing. Mother darling kept trying to get him to be quieter.
    “What for? Robin Lyn surely knows what it’s all about, and if she don’t, it’s time she did,” he said.
    I tried burying my head in the pillow, but the odor of cigarettes was too much to endure. It wasn’t until they fell asleep that I did. I was up ahead of them in the morning, which suited me fine because I was able to take a shower and get dressed before Mother darling and Cory woke. At least, that was what I had hoped.
    I was positive I had pushed in the little button on the doorknob that would lock it, but just a few seconds after I had gotten under the water in the tub shower, I heard the door opening and screamed at the sight of Cory, naked himself, stumbling his way toward the toilet. For a moment I thought he didn’t even realize I was there, despite the sound of the shower and my scream. He just began to urinate.
    I pulled the flimsy shower curtain around me.
    “I’m taking a shower!” I screamed.
    “You gotta go when you gotta go,” he mumbled.
    When he was finished, he turned to go, but paused at the door and said, “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears.” He closed the door on his laughter.
    Flushed with embarrassment and anger, I turned off the shower and dried myself. As soon as I was dressed, I charged out of the bathroom. They were both still in bed.
    “Mother!” I called at the closed door.
    There was a long moment of silence and then I heard, “Call me Kay, damn it.”
    “Kay, I need to see you right now.”
    I heard her groan. I waited and waited until she finally opened the door and peered out at me.
    “What?”
    “I was in the bathroom. I had the door shut and I thought locked and he just came in while I was in the shower and… and went to the bathroom.”
    “Next time be sure you lock the door,” she said.
    “It doesn’t work and he saw it was closed and I had the shower running. He had to know I was in there.”
    “He had to go,” she told me. “Don’t make a big deal of it,” she said. “We have to get some sleep. We’ve already gotten a job and we start tonight,” she added, and closed the door.
    My face felt like my blood was boiling just under my skin. I started toward their bedroom door again and then stopped and returned to my room to fume. After a few minutes, I came out and saw that Cory and she had been quite wild and drunk last night. Clothes were strewn everywhere in the already disheveled-looking living room. I thought for a moment, and then I went to his pants and pulled out his wallet. There were three twenties, a ten, a five, and five singles in it. I took the three twenties and put the wallet back.
    “That’s your fine for being disrespectful,” I muttered at the door, and left the apartment.
    I didn’t get too far before I heard a door open and my name called. Kathy Ann was standing in the doorway of her family’s apartment. She was dressed in a robe, and her hair looked like a family of rats had run through it. I debated just ignoring her, but she kept beckoning. As I approached, she stepped out of her apartment and closed the door most of the way.
    “What happened to you last night? I didn’t even know you had left. How did you get home? I had a great time,” she told me before I could offer a single answer.
    “Good for you,” I said.
    “Axel can speak a little Spanish. His family has a Spanish maid. He was impressed with what I already knew.”
    “Sounds like a match made in heaven,” I said dryly, but she was on a happy roll and either ignored or didn’t see my disinterest.
    She looked at me with a smile smeared across her lips like cake frosting.
    “What?” I finally asked.
    “We did it,” she said. “I mean, I did it.”
    “It’s not like running the four-minute