Free The Devil's Stepdaughter: A Bell Elkins Story (Bell Elkins Novels) by Julia Keller

The Devil’s Stepdaughter
    They were gathered beside the creek. At that point she didn’t know their names, but in time she would. There was Steve, the oldest and thinnest and tallest, along with another boy and three girls: Leonard, Abigail, Crystal and Tina.
    Steve, hands in his pockets, was leaning out over the black, bad-smelling water, examining the greasy surface with meticulous care, like a finicky surgeon scouting for precisely the right spot for the first cut. Leonard hunched behind him, eager but in a different way, not suave, fidgety with expectation. Abigail, Crystal and Tina stood in a small circle a few feet over, intent on some mysterious game. All five were barefoot—it was nearly noon on a summer day and the heat was tremendous, overpowering—and wore cutoff jeans and T-shirts. All five had flat, straight hair the color of dirty sand.
    “It’s her.”
    The circle of girls broke apart with a clean snap that was almost audible. The one who had spoken was Crystal. Belfa didn’t know that at the time, aware only that she was the biggest girl. Not the oldest, Belfa would later learn. Abigail was sixteen, two years older than Crystal, but Crystal outweighed her by a good fifty pounds. The weight did not seem sloppy, like regrettable excess, liable to bog down her movements, but like an aspect of her personality, a solid, irrefutable fact that the world would have to find a way to deal with. Crystal’s bulk had a certain dogged inevitability to it; each pound looked as if it had a premeditated reason for being there. Abigail was small and slight. Tina was six, and slight-built, like Abigail. Steve was nineteen. Leonard was seventeen. The boys were skinny, though, and so looked considerably younger than their ages.
    “How old are you?” Abigail asked her.
    “Eleven,” Belfa said. She was ten, but she would be eleven in two months. Their stares persuaded her that she needed to go on. “They told me to come on down here. To find you all. By the creek.”
    “Who. Who told you that.” Now it was Crystal again who addressed her. Crystal’s questions didn’t come out like questions. They came out like tiny pricks from a straight pin, quick and needle-sharp, avid and ravenous, even though her eyes seemed to have been dipped in a vat of liquid boredom.
    “Mr. and Mrs. McCluskey,” Belfa said.
    “
Mr. and Mrs. McCluskey
.” Crystal, mocking her, made her voice high-pitched and silly-sounding. With two fingers she flicked back the quadrant of her long hair that had fallen across her face.
    “Yeah,” Belfa said, choosing to ignore the mockery.
    “
Yeah
.” Still in the prissy, fluting tone.
    Belfa focused on her tormentor. Crystal had full lips, a spread-out nose spattered with acne, and droopy, languid-looking eyelids. Head tilted, feet spread, hands on her massive hips, she was a peculiar combination of sluggishness and preternatural attentiveness, like someone who is simultaneously dormant and over-stimulated. The half-closed eyes were a ruse; she missed nothing.
    “Stop that,” Belfa said.
    “
Stop that
.”
    Crystal’s brothers and sisters apparently were used to her habit of casual harassment, and untroubled by it, so they paid no attention. Steve continued to lean out over the creek; Leonard leaned behind him. Abigail and Tina returned to their game, something involving fingers and counting and obscure rhymes.
    “I’m supposed to be here, okay?” Belfa said.
    “
I’m supposed to be here
,” Crystal said, smirking, smacking her lips. “
Okay?
“
    “Cut it out.”
    “
Cut it out
.”
    Steve’s voice broke the chain of Crystal’s abuse. “There’s one,” he said, and Crystal abruptly turned away from Belfa to join the others as they massed closer to the creek’s edge, ready for a show. Suddenly Steve, with a motion so nimble that it startled Belfa, reached down and plucked a small object from under the pale drowsy grasses fringing the creek bank. He opened his clenched fist ever