Anything for a Friend PDF
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^ ARCH.56069-7-$1.75 Friends—or partners in crime? Ellen Ck>idbrd Ftiend Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 http://www.archive.org/details/anythingforfrienOOconf . ANYTHING TO WIN FRIENDS "Aren'tyou scared?" asked Lynn. "Imean, isn't it scary knowing that a bloody murder hap- pened right there in your own parents' bed- room?" "Well—" I hesitated . . . "Actually, when I first found out, it was pretty scary. After all, my bedroom is right next to my parents'. I mean, there I was, lying in bed in the dark, knowing that only a few feet away, a grisly crime had left blood spattered on the walls." My, that was good! I was warming up to the story. All six girls stared, wide-eyed and fasci- nated especially during that part about the . . . blood spattered on the walls. I must admit, that sounded terrific. . . ^EllenCkmS^rd Btiend PUBLISHED BYPOCKET BOOKS NEWYORK POCKETBOOKS,aSimonBeSchusterdivisionof GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION 1230AvenueoftheAmericas,NewYork,N.Y.10020 Copyright© 1979 by EUenConford PublishedbyarrangementwithLittle, Brown andCompany Library ofCongress CatalogCardNumber: 78-27843 Allrights reserved, includingtheright to reproduce thisbookorportions thereofin anyformwhatsoever. Forinformation address Little, Brown andCompany, 34Beacon Sreet, Boston, Mass. 02106 ISBN: 0-671-56069-7 FirstPocket BooksprintingFebruary, 1981 987654321 10 ANARCHWAY PAPERBACK andARCH aretrademarks of Simon & Schuster. Printed in the U.S.A. IL4+ • To Michael, fortelling me about PhilRizzuto*s roommate. The first time I saw Stafford W. Stemwood he was domg somethingweirdwithworms. We'd only been in Crestwood a week. I was sort of exploring the new neighborhood and finding that there wasn't all that much to explore. The houses looked a lot alike, the streets looked a lot alike, and unless you knew your way around, it was very easy toget lost. Which I did. I guess I began to walk around in circles, because I passed Daffodil Lane three times before I knew for sure thatIwasn'tgoingtherightway. All the streets had flower names: Daisy Court, Ca- mellia Drive, Rhododendron Road. I thought that was pretty sickening. Our house was on Sweetpea Street, which made me want to gag, but my mother pointed out that we were lucky, because we could have bought a house in another development where they named all the streets afterbirds, and thatwas onTitwillowWay. So it was no wonder that I couldn't keep all those ANYTHING FOR A FRIEND flowers straight in my head. Do I turn left at Tulip? Right at Zinnia? No matter what I did, I kept winding up on DaffodilLane. Everything was so quiet. It was thelastweek of sum- mer and I guess everyone was away or something, be- cause there were hardly any kids around and no one my age. I was beginm'ng to get this really sick feeling in my stomach, knowing I was lost and not having any money with me to call my mother, even if I found a pay phone somewhere. I hated this place, just like I knew I would before we came here. It was dull and deserted and nobody cared about a lost kid who could go around in circles forever until she dropped dead from hunger and tiredness. And that's when I saw Stafford W. Stemwood. He was squatting on the sidewalk with a stick in his hand, talking to something on the ground. He hadn't been there the first two times I went by, so for a minute I thought maybe I wasn't going around in circles any- more. But I looked up at the street sign and, sure enough, Iv/asback onDaffodilLane again. Well, at least he can tell me how to get back to my house,—I thought. I walked toward him. He was kind of plump not really fat, but sort of bulge-y and he had blond hair that looked like it had been cut around a bowl. When I reached him I could see that he was bending over two worms andpoking at them gently with a stick. He saw my legs and looked up, squinting at me through his glasses. "What are you doing to those poor worms?" I asked. "What does itlooklike I'm doing?" "It looks like you're poking themwith a stick," I said.
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