Free The Black Feather by Olivia Claire High Page A

with a lot of young families. She wondered if anyone she knew still lived here.
    She experienced some happy times here, but all too often they were overshadowed by unhappy moments. Like the day her father gave her precious bike to his latest paramour’s little girl to impress his lover when he was in between jobs and short of cash. Or the time her mother made the one and only parent/teacher conference at school and ended up trying to seduce the young male teacher.
    But she wasn’t here to reminisce. Nostalgia could have no part in her return to this childhood home tonight. She found the house she sought at the end of the street in a row of houses all very similar in style.
    Her old house stood out from the others mainly because of its neglected appearance. The windows were dark and without curtains. Several advertisement newspapers yellowed by the weather lay on the front walk that divided the two patches of front lawn. The grass was badly in need of mowing and weeds had taken over the flowerbeds flanking the three steps leading up to the porch.
    An empty field bordered one side of the house, silent and shrouded in darkness, while the neighbors on the other side were obviously having a party in their backyard. She sniffed the air and smelled the distinctive aroma of grilling meat. Loud music, bright lights, and laughter spilled over the flimsy fence. Suzanne remembered going to a birthday party in that yard once upon a time. She wondered if the same family lived there after all these years.
    The boy had been eight and in her class at school. Her mother had forgotten about the party and gone off to lunch with friends. No gift had been bought, so Suzanne shook all the money out of her Unicorn bank from Nanadoo and used the meager cash to buy a present.
    She ran six blocks to the nearest Mom and Pop store and had just enough money to buy the boy a thin coloring book and a small box of crayons. She hurried back home and wrapped them in paper towels using one of her hair ties to keep the ends of the paper closed.
    The boy hadn’t opened her gift with the others and when she got ready to leave, she saw his mother scoop it up and toss it in the trash with the discarded wrappings from the other presents. Suzanne stood there now flinching, not wanting to remember, but unable to forget.
    She couldn’t help envying the people partying there now who seemed to be enjoying themselves while she had to skulk around like a thief. And skulking was a lonely business. She darted around the side of the house to the back. She skidded to a stop at the sight that greeted her. If she thought the front was overgrown, the backyard looked like a jungle. It reminded her of her time in Belize.
    Whoever occupied the house last hadn’t bothered to do any yard work from the looks of things. Her parents didn’t do much gardening when they’d lived here, either, but the plants were young and small then. She could see everything had definitely flourished over the years. How did her dad expect her to find anything in this tangle of vegetation that seemed to fill almost every available space? She’d need a machete or better yet, a bulldozer to get through this mess.
    There weren’t as many streetlights this far down the street. But she had a fairly good view of her surroundings, thanks to the partying neighbors. Although it would have been a lot less difficult if the bag she had to find was any color instead of green. Leave it to her dad to make things complicated. But on the flip side, if the bag was a brighter color that would make it easier for someone else to find it. She gulped in a resigned sigh, lowered her head, and plunged boldly into the overgrown plants closest to the side of the fence by the street, hoping this might be where her dad may have tossed his elusive green bag.
    This wasn’t going to be easy.
    But she had a feeling trying to explain to Thad why she’d lied to him was probably going to be a far more daunting task.
     
    Thad frowned