Klickitat Read Online Free PDF

was a stove, a picnic table, a refrigerator with its plug pulled out and its cord on the floor. I heard a scratching in the ceiling, mice up there. A poster on the wall showed the planet Earth, floating in space, all the oceans and the continents, America and Oregon, all the cities and forests, all the people invisible, too small to see.
    â€œThis is where she was,” Audra said.
    â€œWhat if he finds us in here?” I said. “That man.”
    We were whispering, but still our voices echoed, a little.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “What’s he really going to do? He probably wouldn’t even care. Here, this way …”
    We went through the room and it was so dusty I could see Audra’s bare footprints on the wooden floor. Through a door, through a narrow room with one single bed in it, then into another bedroom that was a little bigger.
    â€œThis is her room,” Audra said, her arms out wide. “Can you feel it?” She began to pull out the drawers of a dresser. They were all empty.
    The room had one window and through it I could see part of a rust-colored horse. It was rubbing its long neck along the side of an old outhouse. Standing there, watching Audra, I was so happy, so relieved that the girl was gone, that she wasn’t there. It was only the two of us, whatever we were doing.
    â€œIt’s different, if she lived with her dad,” I said. “She had help, I mean. You said she lived by herself, all those years.”
    â€œWhat?” Audra got down on her hands and knees, looking for something.
    â€œYou said you knew her. That she told you things—”
    â€œI did not say that,” she said. “Vivian—”
    â€œYou said you met someone,” I said. “Someone different than everyone else.”
    Audra whirled on me, still on her knees, her voice breaking from its whisper: “That wasn’t her. That was someone else. Someone very important.”
    â€œWho?” I said.
    â€œHe’s gone,” she said, her voice soft again. “He went somewhere for a little while. I’m waiting for him to come back. I thought, while he’s gone, I could still prepare. That’s why we need to talk to the girl, so when he comes back he’ll know I’m learning things, that I’m the one.”
    Audra got down on her hands and knees, her ear to the floor, peeking under the bed. Then she reached out and I saw it, a long, dark-colored hair snagged on a rough part of the wooden wall. She held it up in the light and we both looked at it, without having to say that it was hers, the girl’s. Audra wound it around and around her finger, into a tiny coil, so small, and put it in the breast pocket of her shirt. She buttoned the pocket.
    The bed was covered by a stained wool blanket, and next Audra pulled that back and underneath was only abare striped mattress with its buttons worn down so the metal showed. She pushed at the edge of the mattress with her knee, lifted up the edge. A piece of paper fell out, down onto the floor.
    After she read it, she handed it to me:
    A conversation is a spoken
    exchange of thoughts, opinions
    and feelings. A feeling is a
    tender emotion. An emotion is
    a state of mental agitation or
    disturbance, a feeling.
    Caroline
    Caroline
    Caroline
    I handed the scrap of paper back to Audra, but later at home I asked and she let me keep it. I compared it to the writing in my yellow notebook, but it wasn’t close to the same. The girl’s writing was even and perfect. Every
a
was the same as every other
a
, every
t
like every other
t
.
    â€œAre you feeling okay?” Audra said, that day when wewent to see the girl who wasn’t there. We were about to run back out of that little house, across the field, past the empty mailbox, back toward the bus and home.
    â€œI think so,” I said.
    â€œI love you, Vivian,” Audra said. “You know that, right? I’ll always take