Innocent Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

the only sane thing to do.
    “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,” she whispered. “But I keep thinking about her being lonely and scared. I need someone else to go through this with me. I’m sorry.”
    “No, don’t be. I think... I know I should feel relieved, just like you said. It’s just...”
    Lisa stood up sniffling without saying another word and walked to the small window above the sink. She poured some water in the coffee maker and stood there for a few minutes staring outside in silence, gripping the edge of the sink firmly with both hands. When the water started boiling she let go and sat back down, arms crossed resting on the table, a slice of bread under her elbow.
    “Y’know what? What difference does it really make? Nothing is gonna make any difference anymore. She’s gone. She ain’t comin’ back. However it happened, she’s gone, Jessy. I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but I just want to forget about this whole nightmare and move on.”
    Irritation squeezed Jessica like a fist. Lisa had managed to chew up a distressing piece of information and spit it out in one single word: DEAD. What difference did it make how if the end result was the same? Simple. And of course she was right, Kaitlyn was gone, but Jessica couldn’t let her go as easily as that and Lisa’s simplistic approach to the whole situation, to life in general, annoyed her, forced her again to wonder about their friendship and its foundations, made her wish again there could have been someone else to turn to, another door to knock on. But there wasn’t anyone.
    “How about some coffee?” Lisa proposed.
    Simple. Coffee, the solution to every problem. So easy. “If you like.”
    Lisa cleared the table piling everything in the sink; she poured two cups of coffee than sat back at the table with a packet of cigarettes ready next to the mug, and once the cup was emptied she had one. Always a cigarette after a cup of coffee.
    It was almost ten when Bobby emerged from the bedroom. Jessica saw him heading for the bathroom, coming out then heading for the kitchen, his skin pale, a smudge of toothpaste by the side of his thin lips, his clear blue watery eyes still puffy under the bushy eyebrows, his long mullet already tied in a ponytail, like every respectable low- class loser. She could have punched him.
    “Mornin’. Look who’s here! Any coffee ready?”
    Lisa shot out of her chair. “I’ll get you a cup.”
    Bobby sat himself in front of Jessica as soon as Lisa stood up, one elbow on the back of the chair, one arm stretched out on the table, the fingertips of his right hand drumming on a stain of Coke, his nails badly bitten.
    “When’d ya get here then?”
    “Around eight, I think.”
    “ Eight? Glad I didn’t hear you knockin’. What did ya’ have? Four hours sleep, Liz?”
    Lisa nodded by the sink pouring hot coffee in his cup. Behind her the sky was now a pale blue, weak sun rays came through the window tracing her nose, her pouting lips as she concentrated in dissolving the sugar granules in the mug. She looked like a little girl, pure, malleable. It reminded Jessica of her own mother, of all the times she had seen her prepare the man she had married something to eat or drink. It reminded her of all the breakfasts she had eaten at the kitchen table looking at the bruises on Margaret Lynch’s face, all the times her mother had been standing listlessly by the window, where the purple of the blood under her skin disappeared because the light of the morning sun shining behind her made her whole face look darker.
    “Jessica needed to get some things off her chest,” Lisa said bringing the coffee to the table.
    “I’m sure Bobby doesn’t want to hear about it.” She didn’t want him to be involved; he had made his indifference very evident during the days before the funeral.
    “That’s right. And I’ve had enough lookin’ at my princess here crying. She’s been in a state, y’know