Free Gathering Clouds by V. C. Andrews Page A

recurrent dream. I’m pirouetting beautifully, only the floor upon which I’m dancing gradually turns into ice. I can feel it growing thinner and thinner, and when it begins to crack and I realize I’m sinking into the icy water, I reach for my sister Victoria’s hand, but she looks at it and skates on by.
    Then, I wake up.
    When I was younger, I would begin to cry.
    Now, I just try to calm my pounding heart.

ONE
     
    What bothered me at first, but then began to amuse me about my sister, Victoria, was that even though she was two years younger than I was, anyone who met us for the first time always assumed she was older. When we were much younger, Victoria loved that and I hated it. She would gloat, her face practically illuminating as if there were a bulb inside her head. Later on, when we were much older, she hated it when people thought she was older than I was, and I loved it. It was my time to gloat. It’s like what Daddy used to mutter when something unpleasant happened to someone he disliked or someone who had done something bad to him: “What goes around comes around.”
    When people first met us, they would wonder if Victoria and I were really sisters. I could see the skepticism in their eyes, because we didn’t look that much alike. One of the reasons everyone thought she was older than her height. At five she was taller than I was at seven, and when she was twelve, she sprouted like a long-distance runner putting on speed at the sight of the finish line. I ended up being five feet six and Victoria reached five feet ten and a half. Her features were sharper, harder, her eyes a faded brown. Her growth spurt seemed to elongate her face, too. The skin just fell from her cheekbones to her jawline like wet bedsheets. She was always slim, boyish through her teen years and really not much different when she got into her twenties. Her face filled out a bit more, and because she kept her hair so short, it always looked plumper than it really was, but that made her ears look bigger than they were, too.
    Victoria was never interested in working at her femininity and her looks. She didn’t have the patience to spend the necessary time on her hair, her makeup, and she would never have her nails done. She clipped them like a man with an inexpensive nail clipper. She had big feet with bony-looking toes so she rarely wore thongs or even sandals and never cared to put on nail polish. I knew some of my friends thought she was a lesbian because she paid as much interest to boys as she did to jewelry, designer clothes, or anything that mattered to girls our age.
    On the other hand, Victoria was always a much better student than I was, especially in math and science. Even as a child she was interested in our father’s business dealings and understood things like balance sheets and financial projections. She was always full of questions for him about any deals he made, or property he bought. His goals were important for her to understand, and she would follow him about and pepper him with questions until he threw up his hands and declared he would force her to sit in his office and listen as he talked to her just as he talked to his associates. He meant it as a threat, but she loved it. There was no place in the house she would rather be and nothing she would rather do.
    Whereas I didn’t even fully understand what my father did for a living and had no desire to do so. Music, parties, boys, and clothes were far more exciting. I tried to get Victoria interested in having a social life. Whenever I could, I talked about mine, but nothing I said seemed to hold her attention long. Whenever I asked her why she wasn’t invited to parties her classmates had or interested in making a party at our house, she would shrug and say something like, “It’s not important to me right now.”
    When would it be? Would it ever be? I wondered. I must admit, I didn’t spend all that much time wondering or caring about Victoria’s happiness. If