Girl Unmoored Read Online Free PDF Page A

back the locks.
    Except what she should have said was, “Don’t be afraid, little children, it’s just me,” because there was a rolled up bloody piece of toilet paper hanging out of her nose. Big blotches of bright red blood had dripped onto her orange nightgown and there were smaller ones on her ratty old slippers, which probably used to be orange too. Rennie looked at me like we should make a run for it, but I stayed cheery the way Avon ladies are supposed to.
    “Avon ladies!” I said, as if all our customers had bloody torpedoes sticking out their noses. “Let’s talk beauty.”
    Rennie groaned.
    “How are you today, Mrs. Weller?” I asked, even though a blind person could tell she was bad.
    “Damn nose again,” Mrs. Weller said with that bloody torpedo bumping up and down on her lips.
    “Oh,” I said, really cheery this time, because the customer was always right.
    We hadn’t been Avon ladies since last year. Some people might think we were getting too old to be Avon ladies, but not her. “So what do you have, girls?” she asked, getting down to business.
    Rennie looked surprised, but I didn’t, because bloody nose or no bloody nose, Mrs. Weller was our best customer. She was always trying to look good, but the truth was she looked exactly like George Washington in a dress.
    And this morning, she looked like an especially grumpy George Washington. “We have a lot of great supplies today,” I said. But what she really needed was more Kleenex to shove up her nose.
    Mrs. Weller gurgled something and walked past us to get to the wagon. The smell of pot roast and stale baby powder lingered behind. Rennie pinched her nose, but I tried to keep my face pleasant!
    “ Milk soap?” she croaked, holding up one of the tiny squares an inch away from the bloody torpedo. This was the bulk of our supply: little soaps and shampoos that Mr. Perry brought back from his trips. He was always giving them to Mrs. Perry, who just threw them into one of her drawers and kept using her fancy French stuff anyway.
    “There’s a special today. We’ll give you three soaps for the price of two,” I said, ignoring Rennie’s open mouth.
    Mrs. Weller dropped the soap back into the wagon and mumbled, “Smells like a frying pan.”
    A window slammed shut from somewhere behind me and when I turned around, I saw that it was mine.
    I took off. It had to be M, snooping around in my room. And this time I was going to catch her.
    I ran around to the front of our house, up the porch stairs, and opened the front door fast enough for it to slam against the wall. Then I took the stairs two at a time and turned into my room. And there it was: my shut window—sitting there like it wasn’t even open a minute ago. Everything else was just sitting there too: one white sock hanging out of the drawer, exactly how I left it.
    I walked over to my window and slid it open again. I could see Mrs. Weller down there, leaning into the wagon trying to smell something, and Rennie watching her with her top lip pinned up. Then I heard the toilet flush and M cough.
    I walked into the hall, crossed my arms, and waited. This time I was going to tell her to stop snooping around in my room or I’d tell my dad.
    Except everything changes when you hear someone throw up.
    She threw up three times. Then I heard the toilet flush again and M start crying. Hard. Like maybe she had slammed her foot into the door. Suddenly, I just wanted to go back outside and talk beauty.
    When I got to the wagon, Rennie’s lip was still pulled up and Mrs. Weller was smelling a small bottle of blue conditioner with Kennebunk Marriott on it.
    And then I knew what Rennie’s face was all about. The torpedo had fallen half way out her nose.
    Rennie put her finger down her throat and gagged, but Mrs. Weller was too busy to notice. She dropped the mini bottle back into the wagon and picked up another one. I shot Rennie a warning look. You can gag all you want unless you need a combination