Lilac Mines Read Online Free PDF

wrist cuffs before anyone else did. Now she’s A Lesbian, a victim in a neck brace, and no one knows what to do with her, not even Felix herself.
    When she goes to the break room at lunch, Jessi Menaster and an editorial assistant named Shana are making fun of an actress’s dress at a recent awards show.
    â€œShe looked like a birthday cake,” Jessi is saying. She is tall and slim, and always wears black pants and perfectly pressed, button-down shirts.
    â€œOr a porn star,” Shana says. “The star of, like, Bedtime for Boobsy.”
    â€œOh my God, Shana, you are so fucking hilarious. Sometimes I wish we weren’t such a classy magazine. Then we could publish comments like that.”
    When they see Felix, they clam up.
    â€œHey, Felix,” Shana says sheepishly. “Sorry.”
    â€œFor what?” It’s not like they were making fun of her. Do they think that she’s too pathetic to have fun now?
    â€œUm, just, I don’t know…” Shana trails off.
    Felix feels her face turn red above the neck brace. She leans into the refrigerator. Her sack lunch is right in front of her, but she huddles in the cool air as long as she can. She wants to tell them that blood, when it is in your mouth, does not taste scarlet or crimson or carmine. It tastes metallic and evil. But, of course, they don’t want to know this. Maybe that’s why they don’t want to talk to her.
    After eating by herself, she slouches down in her cubicle, as far as her neck brace and bandage-bustier will permit. She wishes she could call Eva. Eva would be fired up, ready to litigate. Felix doesn’t know which hurts more, the persistent ache of her ribcage, or the ache inside it.
    She tries to fact-check a piece on platform sandals, but her mind wanders, and soon she’s searching the Internet for flights to New York.

SQUARES
Anna Lisa: Fresno, 1965
    Anna Lisa climbs the ladder to the attic store room above Hill Food & Supply expecting to find what she always finds: crates of canned goods and complete silence, except for the train whistle she hardly hears anymore. When she and her sister Suzy were little, they thought the room was haunted, and somehow Anna Lisa assumed Suzy was still afraid. It wasn’t hard for Anna Lisa to claim the space as her own, since no one else wanted it.
    But today there is a red wool hat bobbing up and down between the window and a box of stewed tomato tins. And there is moaning. A ghost? Anna Lisa thinks. Oddly, the thought doesn’t frighten her. She could use some company.
    The voice that says, “Oh God. Goodness,” however, is Suzy’s. Self-correcting, demure after the fact. “Anna Lisa, what—” Suzy sits up and pulls the hat further down on her head, even before checking to see whether her white sundress is covering the parts of her body it should be covering. Even before glancing at the moaning ghost next to her, a disheveled boy Anna Lisa vaguely remembers as Kevin Zacky. He was a sophomore when she was a senior, a kid whose white-toothed yearbook picture preceded him. He looks far less confident now.
    Suddenly the frozen Kevin Zacky and the flustered Suzy switch roles. He becomes a flurry of movement, as if executing a play on the football field, and she stares at Anna Lisa from beneath the brim of her hat. He mumbles his way to the end zone—the square of light above the ladder—and disappears. Anna Lisa hears herself ask, “Why are you wearing a hat?”
    â€œWhy are you here?” shoots Suzy, as if the attic is hers.
    And it is, Anna Lisa realizes. The way Suzy leans against the splintery wall with just the right amount of caution gives her away. She’s been coming here for a while. Her sweat and perfume fill the air like tea in water.
    â€œThis is my—” Anna Lisa begins, but it sounds stupid. “I was going to read,” she says. It sounds like an apology. She makes sure the back of the