Free Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde Page A

to my head. “She needs our help! Andiamo!”
    I don't know what he thought was going on, but clearly my insistence was convincing him that Emily needed rescuing and she needed it now.
    Which was true enough, just probably not the way he thought.
    He looked around, then climbed up onto the porch rail, and from there hoisted himself up into the cherry tree, whose upper branches came fairly close to her balcony.
    Uh, wait a minute, I thought. I couldn't follow him that way.
    “Ahm...” I called after him as he climbed up and up. I had been counting on his forcing his way in through either the front or back door, or on our being annoying enough that Emily would come out. His gaining access to her room via the tree wouldn't help me at all.
    “Signorina Emily!” the gondolier called again. The branches that would support his weight were not all that close to the window, so he took a flying leap.
    “Careful,” I whisper-warned him.
    And he landed lightly on the balcony rail, then jumped down to the balcony itself. I guess a gondolier does have to have good equilibrium. Maybe somehow this would work after all. Maybe Emily would realize I couldn't be ignored.
    The gondolier kicked in the wooden shutters.
    I heard Emily yell, “Guards!”
    “Emily!” I called, though my head pounded in protest.
    So I don't know if the gondolier said anything as he swayed there, holding on to the window frame for support and balance. Or if Emily did. What I saw was the gondolier stagger backwards, shoved by someone in the room. A guy who could have been the same one who threw me out of the dance strode out onto the balcony. I saw the guy grab hold of the gondolier.
    Pick him up off his feet.
    High off his feet.
    And toss him over the rail.
    This was so unexpected, so unreal, I thought, He’ll land on his feet back on the branch he jumped from —like a scene from a cartoon, run backwards for comic effect.
    But he didn't land on that branch.
    At least, not on his feet.
    And he certainly didn't land only on that branch.
    He hit several as he fell, fell, fell, before his body finally landed in a crumpled heap on the ground. I went running up to him, but I didn't need to. I already knew there was no way anyone could have survived that fall.
    Okay, he was only a computer-generated character, but he had been kind to me. And he had been concerned about Emily. Emily, who might well have helped to program him so that all he knew was gondoliering and being loyal to her; Emily, who now poked her head out beyond the jagged edges of the window shutter and called down to me, “Go away, Grace. I don't want you here.” She wasn't shocked, she wasn't rattled, she wasn't acting like “Oh no, this is not what I intended.”
    I had thought before that she wasn't the same Emily I knew. Now I had no idea who she was.
    She closed—as best she could—what was left of the shutters, leaving her guard out on the balcony, still watching me with those cold, bland eyes looking out from his pretty face.
    Suddenly, I didn't want to be here, either, couldn't bear to be here. “End game,” I announced to the eavesdropping Rasmussem personnel. “Bring me back to Rasmussem.” And I sat down on the grass among the fragrant cherry blossoms that had been knocked loose as the gondolier fell, and I waited to be brought back home.

Chapter 9
    Fun and Games with Phones
    W HEN I TOLD everyone what Emily's dance partner/ bodyguard/hit man had done to the gondolier, Ms. Bennett said, “Nothing like that should be able to happen.”
    Mom whirled on her and snapped, “Do you listen to yourself ? Do you have any idea how often you have said that?”
    I saw the flash of irritation on Ms. Bennett's face. But she didn't lash out. She simply changed the topic and asked me for more details about what I'd seen at the dance.
    Mom cut me off, demanding instead, “Grace, are you all right?”
    I realized I was sitting there on the total immersion couch with my hand feeling my forehead.