7 Souls Read Online Free PDF Page A

lady. Listen, Ellie-belle, this is serious —I can’t figure out what happened to me. I mean, I can’t remember any of—”
    “‘Borrowed’ like you’ll return it, or Mary Shayne—borrowed?”
    Mary shook her head impatiently—which was a mistake, given the lingering, painful fog inside her skull. “We had dinner with Mom at Eduardo’s; I remember that part. But after that”—she spread her hands helplessly—“who knows.”
    “Poor Mary.” Ellen pouted, slapping her laptop shut. When Ellen did that, when she made a face like that, Mary could see the ghost outline of her sister’s attractiveness hidden behind her glasses and boring hair. She’s not as pretty as I am , Mary thought—she tended to dispense with false modesty inside the privacy of her own mind— but she’s definitely got something, if she only let herself realize it .
    Mary really didn’t get it. The only crushes her sister ever had were on yellowing history books that she’d found in the dollar bin at the Strand bookstore. The only clothes she ever wore were solid-colored hoodies and cords from the Gap. It was a shame, too, because Ellie could have been pretty if she’d just been willing to try the tiniest bit. She actually looked a little like Mary, but with her dark hair always cut in a shapeless bob (Ellen called it practical), and her refusal to wear makeup (Ellen called it naturale) , it was hard to see the similarity.
    It wasn’t the first time Mary had thought that, but she’d learned not to bring it up. Ellen didn’t react well to discussions of her appearance. She didn’t think it was important. She wanted to be judged as who she was , damn it, she kept telling Mary, not by what she looked like. The hidden rebuke was hard to miss, but Mary politely ignored it. Ellen wasn’t interested in boys or clothes or anything like that, and Mary had stopped trying to change her mind.
    The only boy Ellen ever spent time with was Dylan something, a quiet intellectual type she’d met at—big shocker—a book fair near Columbia University. On those few occasions when Mary had seen Scruffy Dylan in the kitchen, he had been so painfully quiet that she’d thought he was an exchange student. Mary had repeatedly explained to Ellen that having a male best friend—even if Scruffy Dylan was , technically, an Ivy League freshman—was the absolute kiss of death if she wanted to land a guy, but Ellen didn’t care, since she wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend.
    “Okay, let’s be systematic,” Ellen began wearily. “You remember Eduardo’s—”
    “Yeah.” Mary’s memory focused, now that she was facing Ellie again. “And Mom left first , right? She got into one of her—”
    “We talked about Dad.” Ellen put it matter-of-factly, as she always did, and Mary had to force herself to remember that her sister wasn’t upsetting her on purpose—she just didn’t seem to realize how uninterested Mary was in that endless, ongoing argument. “You remember? Mom said that she wished he was here to see you turn seventeen, and you couldn’t—”
    “All right, all right.” And can we drop it? Morton Shayne had been in the ground for ten years, but his absence was always a fresh topic for her mother and sister at precisely the moments that Mary was trying to have a good time. “I didn’t say the right solemn thing and Mom got all sad and left. Can we not—”
    “Whatever, whatever.” Ellen waved a hand impatiently. “Sorry—it is what it is. Anyway we stayed another ten minutes, and then you had somewhere to go.”
    “Where?” Mary tried to concentrate, but she couldn’t recall anything about what her motives or whims had been—besides, of course, getting away . “Did I say where I was going? Did anyone call me?”
    Ellen shook her head serenely. “You got in a cab and took off. You were in some kind of hurry, but you didn’t say anything else.”
    “Ellie, this is serious —I’m freaked that I can’t remember what I