Little Blue Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

stupid of my smile as I say, “ You know what I would like?”
    â€œYeah, I do. Well, you’re not getting that, so shut up.”
    â€œWhere’d you get those friends of the aspirin?”
    â€œI got them from the friend of the pharmacist. Shush. What I want is for you to talk to your mom about doing a portrait.”
    â€œPlease, Maxie, don’t make my mom draw that awful man in a toga.”
    â€œNot that fathead. My mother. Do you think you could talk to your ma about doing my ma? I think it would be friggin’ beautiful, I really do. And she deserves it.”
    â€œShe deserves something, that’s for sure. Hey, Maxie?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œWhat about Junie?”
    â€œWhat about her?”
    â€œShe’s gone, that’s what? She’s vanished, and nobody seems to be bothered about this but me.”
    â€œFirst, she ain’t vanished. She’s just, someplace, I don’tknow. Second, she’s tougher than Turkish Taffy, that kid. Nobody worries about Junie.”
    â€œI worry about her.”
    â€œThat’s because you’re a big ol’ nancy boy and you’re in love with her.”
    â€œI’m not . . . Never said I was in love with her.”
    â€œGood,” she says, turning me manually around the corner to my street. “ ’Cause you’re dumped, remember?”
    â€œAh, she didn’t mean that. She was lying. Sweet Junie Blue Lies and Lyin’ O’Brien. That’s who we are. That’s what we do.”
    Maxie stops as we reach the sidewalk in front of my house. She looks the place down and up, down to its rampant rosebushes creeping their way up the trellises, up to its yellow brick colonial square face with all the windows and the handsome surging gables. She is shaking her head in a kind of wonderment.
    â€œShe wasn’t lyin’, O’Brien. I’m sorry about that, but she meant it. However, if it makes you feel any better, I think she’s crazy.”
    â€œYou do?” I say, and feel a very stupid heart-flutter over this.
    â€œAbsolutely. I’d do you for the house alone.”
    Flutter subsides.“It’s not that nice a house,” I say.
    â€œSure it is. It’s a nice house, you’re a nice guy, your momis a nice artist, and your dad, whoever he is and whatever he does, is a superior piece of work to my shit-ass father. Can I take a rose home to my ma?”
    My mother is crazy-protective of her garden, and especially her roses. She has yellow and bloodred and pink, and they look like she makes them up individually in her studio. I couldn’t possibly—
    â€œWait. Don’t pick,” Mom says from behind the first-floor window screen. “I’ll go get my pruning shears.”
    â€œMom!” I snap at her nosy little vapor trail.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    â€œI think I should draw her with the roses all around her, in her hair, in the background,” Mom says, lost in her excited creative cloud as she arranges flowers at the kitchen sink.
    â€œThat would be friggin’ lovely,” Maxine says, sipping her Earl Grey tea.
    â€œFriggin’ lovely,” Mom echoes, giggling. “How about I throw in some friggin’ baby’s breath as well?”
    â€œIs she makin’ fun of me?” Maxine whispers, and in her flashing eye I see a small bolt of what makes her father scary.
    â€œAbsolutely, positively not,” I say, and as soon as I say it, I see the total opposite thing, the bright and open unguarded joy that makes her sister such nip to a cat like me.
    â€œBreathe on it, baby,” Maxine says cheerily.
    My mom is about as happy as she gets, doing this, andMaxine is clearly getting a lot for her money today, scoring a professional-quality bouquet for her mother as well as scheduling a sitting for her mother’s surely once-in-a-lifetime portrait.
    This is pure contentment, then,