Dark Rooms Read Online Free PDF Page A

done.

Chapter 3
    When I returned to Chandler, everyone was nice to me: students and teachers, administrators and maintenance workers. And all day long I sat in class, in the dining hall, in the library, hunched under that niceness, cramped and stiff. I expected things to be easier, or at least more natural, with Jamie, Maddie, and Ruben, but they weren’t. The three of them rallied behind me, made a point almost of claiming me, of showing everybody at school that nothing had changed, that we were still best friends, though we’d only ever been sort-of friends, me never quite able to fit in or keep up. They loyally sat with me at lunch, walked with me to class, saved me a seat in the snack bar. Yet when we were alone, there was a tension, a hostility even—all of us trying to sound polite, but with an edge, my edge just as sharp as theirs—and it surprised me because I didn’t know what it was or where it was coming from.
    Until, all of a sudden, I did. My dad, what he said to the reporter about Jamie—that was the source of tension between them and me.Actually, not what Dad said, but what I didn’t say in response to it: that I never believed it. Which I never did, not for a second. (Jamie rape and murder Nica? Not in a million years!) And in the conversation we were having under every other conversation we were having, the one that was conducted in tones of voice and pauses and breaths rather than spoken language, they were asking me to say it. Not publicly. There was no need to embarrass my dad further. Not even out loud. A nod or a look at the right moment would have been enough. It was fair and valid and entirely within reason that they wanted me to say it. I didn’t want to, though. I don’t know why I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to and, what’s more, I wasn’t going to. And no matter what words I was saying to them on top, underneath I was only saying one word, No, and they heard me loud and clear.
    A week or so into my return to Chandler, I was sitting on the quad with Maddie during a free period. The school newspaper was between us, opened to the horoscope page, and we were splitting a kiwi-strawberry Italian ice. Our sunglasses were on and we were talking. She was talking anyway, telling me about a trip she was planning to take to Glastonbury to pick up a pair of pants for Ruben for his birthday, or maybe a pair of pants for herself to wear to Ruben’s birthday. One or the other.
    Maddie was a pale girl, angular and beaky-faced, but she had a body that was blade-thin and a gaze that was cool and contemptuous, which was better than pretty somehow, and in her presence I usually felt self-conscious to the degree that eye contact was difficult. Usually but not that day. That day, I guess, I couldn’t be bothered. I looked down. Saw ants marching out of a crack in the pavement in an orderly black line. I poked at them with the wooden spoon from my Italian ice. They began to swarm.
    Maddie, I suddenly realized, was no longer speaking, was lookingat me in an expectant way, and I understood that she must have asked me something. I looked back at her, hoping her face would offer a clue as to what the question was. She was wearing pearls and a T-shirt that said LOVE SLAVE . Her long blond hair was heavily gelled. “Sorry,” I said, giving up, “what did you say?”
    â€œI said, do you want to go with me?”
    A beat, then, “To Glastonbury?”
    â€œJamie told me I could borrow his car. Or we could take your shit heap.”
    I threw down the spoon, wiped my sticky hands on the patch of grass in front of me. “Yeah, all right.”
    â€œHow about after school since there’s no practice today? We could get dinner while we’re there. Check-in at Archibald isn’t till nine.”
    Another beat passed. Maddie lowered her sunglasses. I could tell she was waiting for me to do the same, but I didn’t want to look at