Free Early Spring 01 Broken Flower by V. C. Andrews Page A

the closets? They were drawing me to them just the way they drew Pandora to the box.
After she had opened it and released all the pain and suffering, sadness and disease, her husband. Epimetheus, and Pandora, who had been stung by the brown moths of sadness and illness, heard another voice urging them to let it out. They opened the box again, and hope emerged. Evil had entered the world, but hope followed closely on its footsteps, to help us.
Couldn't I let hope out? Or would I just unleash the evil that crouched in the darkness, waiting to spring into our lives?
Like Pandora, I was destined to find out.

6 Not a Freak
.
    Everything that had happened during the day made me tired much earlier than I had expected I would be. I turned off the set and went upstairs. I paused in the hallway and listened to see if Mama was crying again, but it was just very, very quiet. I closed my bedroom door and got undressed quickly.
    Once again, I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I couldn't help but think of the things Ian had told me and tried to tell me. Little eggs were floating around inside me. If a boy put his tadpoles into me. I could have a baby grow in my stomach. The whole idea of it frightened me, but it also made me more curious about myself and what was happening now.
    The feelings I had when I touched myself were so different from feelings I had before all this had begun. It made my head spin. My stomach bubbled and gurgled and even ached a bit. Was that because the eggs were bouncing around, waiting for the tadpoles? I did want to learn more and I was sorry now that I had been so angry and mean to Ian. After I got into my pajamas and brushed my teeth. I went out and knocked on his door.
    "Who is it?" he called.
"Me. Can I come in?"
"Come in," he said. He was sitting at his desk,
writing in his journal. "What is it?" he asked, looking annoyed at being interrupted.
    "I don't want to wait to know about the tadpoles," I said, and he
"Call it sperm, Jordan. I just said tadpoles because they look like that under a microscope. Males have reproductive organs, too, of course, and when they reach puberty, they can manufacture the sperm."
"Once a month, too?"
"No, all the time, instantly when aroused," he said.
"What's aroused?"
"Stimulated, excited. When they get hard and bigger like you heard. Blood rushes down there and makes it that way and then, at a certain point, the sperm shoots out. Okay? Now remember, don't go telling Mother I told you all this," he added. "She might not like me doing it. If she tells you, pretend to be hearing it for the first time. Otherwise, she'll be angry at me and I'll never be able to tell you anything again."
"Does it shoot out of you yet?" I asked.
He stared at me for a long moment. "I think you know enough for right now," he said. Then he thought again and stood up. His eyes grew narrow and intense like Dr. DellAcquars were and he stepped up to me. "This is interesting,'" he said. "I wonder if it's instinctive for you to have these thoughts now."
"You mean like the birds coming back?"
"Yes, something like that." He looked back at the door I had left open and then he went to it and closed it softly. "Did you just start thinking about boys?" he asked. "I mean after this thing started happening to you, this precocious puberty?"
I shook my head, but not with conviction. I wasn't sure what he meant. I certainly thought about boys in my class, how this one was cute or that one was ugly. Some were so childish and silly. None looked like they would become as intelligent as Ian.
He started to talk like a teacher again, making a speech as if there were many people in his room and not just me.
"Our reproductive urges are built into us. It's not something we have to learn. I mean, we can learn more about it, understand what happens to us, but we don't have to be taught how to do it, just like we don't have to be taught how to go to the bathroom or eat or sleep. Our bodies need us to do it.