Break the Skin Read Online Free PDF

the one by the window, where someone had written on the sill with a Magic Marker, “Don’t wish ill for your enemy, plan it.”
    I tapped on the stall door. “Rose, it’s me.”
    She was sniffling, and I knew she’d been crying and was trying to stop in hopes I wouldn’t notice.
    “What do you want, Laney?” Her voice had that little cry quiver in it.
    “Just checking on you. You all right?”
    She flushed the toilet. Soon the stall door opened and she stepped out, a hard set to her eyes that told me she meant business. “Someone ought to tell her,” she said, and then she scrunched her mouth up like shecould barely bring herself to call Delilah by name. “Dee.” she said. “She carries on like a whore.”
    “Oh, you know Delilah. She’s just cutting loose.”
    “Like that man would ever have any interest in her.”
    Rose brushed past me and turned on the water at the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, leaning in close, checking to see, I imagine, if her eyes were puffy from the crying.
    I ducked my head and traced my finger over the letters written on the sill. “He’s something, isn’t he?” I said, and it was a brave thing for me to say on account of if Rose didn’t think that red-haired man would have any interest in Delilah, then she’d probably hoot at the idea that he might take notice of me. I got up the nerve to lift my head. “Isn’t he, Rose?”
    She glanced at me in the mirror, and for just an instant her eyes opened wide and I could see the light that man had left in them. Then she looked away. She stood up straight and tugged at her crop top. She folded her arms over her bare belly, probably wishing she’d never worn such a thing, a heavy gal like her. “Men like him,” she said. She bit her lip, trying to find the words to say next. She pulled a couple of paper towels from the dispenser and dried her hands with angry, jerky movements. “That man,” she said. Then she wadded up the paper towels, stuffed them into the trash can, and stormed out, leaving me to fill in the rest: That man is wonderful!
    When I came out of the ladies’ room, I saw Rose at the end of the bar, her hands pressed against it, like she was hanging on to keep her knees from buckling and sending her sliding down to the floor. I saw what she was taking in, the sight of Delilah and that red-haired man getting cozy on the stage. He was talking to a bowlegged little man with a derby hat on his head, a man of an age somewhere between Delilah and me. The red-haired man had his arm around Delilah’s shoulders, and she was leaning into him, her hand flat on his naked stomach, as if they’d been an item for years. She laughed at something the red-haired man said. Then he plucked the derby hat from the bowlegged man and set iton top of her head. She held it in place and came up on her tiptoes to give the red-haired man a kiss.
    The bowlegged man scratched his head. Then he turned away and got busy repositioning mic stands, even though they probably didn’t need to be. I knew he was one of those men who made himself feel important by attaching himself to a band, making it seem that he was part of it, when really all he did was fetch beers, fiddle with mics and amps, and peddle T-shirts like the one he was wearing, a black T-shirt with a giant red bike helmet on top of a little yellow school bus.
    Rose had seen enough. She was on her way out the door. I didn’t know whether to follow her or to stay. I felt the same pain in the heart that I imagine she felt when she saw Delilah with that man, a man we’d all taken to but it was Delilah who’d been bold enough to claim him.
    She called to me. She took off the little man’s derby hat and waved it over her head. “Laney,” she said, “come meet my fella!”
    Maybe it was my first mistake in the whole chain of events that would soon follow—to put on my best face and go to Delilah, to leave Rose to walk back to the trailer by herself. I took a glance out the