Missing Sisters -SA Read Online Free PDF Page B

sleet. “That’s our State Capitol building,” said the guy. “My name’s—” Alice didn’t quite catch it, and didn’t want to. “I’m taking the Pine Hills bus back to the state college dorms. Want to come along?”

    A college boy!

    Alice blushed. She was hip-deep in trouble now. With some effort she managed to say that she needed to find Saint Mary’s School for Boys. The orphans-and-troublemakers school—did he know it? He did. It was even on the same city-bus route. He would take her there.

    “I can’t go to your college,” she said forcefully, so he wouldn’t be expecting things.

    “I’m cool,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll still show you where you’re going.” And so he did, although as the next bus crawled along the streets and Alice noticed cars switching on their headlights, she began to feel that she was getting quite a bit farther from the parking lot of the Sacred Heart Home for Girls than she’d intended. Is that how Eve swallowed the apple too—she was just thinking of something else, and bang, there it was with a big, white, tooth-marked, mouth-shaped cave in it, in her hand, and the juice running down her chin for the rest of her short sorry life?

    Is there a dotted line beyond which the apostles and angels won’t help you anymore? Peg you as a loser? Cut their losses and turn their attentions to a more docile soul, a likelier prospect for the company of saints? If you belonged in Troy, did that dotted line in your case run through, say, downtown Albany? Should she throw herself off the bus and wheel wildly around in the other direction? It was even getting dark. She had no coat.

    She stayed on the bus.

    On they churned through the slush. Each city block seemed to Alice as dense and infinite as a state of the union. She would never get home. What had she been thinking of? Girls from the Sacred Heart weren’t allowed to go out alone! Even the nuns traveled in pairs, and only with permission of Sister John Bosco! The bus flew westward, away from Troy and Albany, in a matter of minutes crossing the borders of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wyoming in her imagination.

    “Here’s our stop,” said the guitar boy, and pulled a cord that made no sound Alice could catch—but the bus stopped and out they tumbled.

    “Thank you,” said Alice to her savior and persecutor. He grinned, and they fell into step together on icy, slate paving stones, under elms, next to snow-covered yards that seemed to Alice as wide as prairies and the lonesome range where the deer and the antelope play. The streetlights came on, one at a time, as if being plugged in by a man in a basement in the State Capitol.

    “Here’s Saint Mary’s,” said the college kid. “Can I come in?”

    “No,” said Alice, and ran up the walk. “Sorry,” she flung over her shoulder, hoping he understood it. “Sorry. Bye.” She pressed the bell marked OUT OF ORDER—PLEASE USE
    KNOCKER. She pressed it again. She knocked out of desperation, not understanding. He stood in the sleet, not going away, in a cone of streetlight, traffic making a blurred pattern of noise and light behind him.

    The door at last opened. There were three boys in sweaters. A receptionist—a Franciscan in sandals and thick, hairy socks—was getting up from behind the desk, putting down his paperback of The Valley of the Dolls . Alice whirled around and cried out to her friend—

    “Heavenly!”

    She was back home within the hour. Father Laverty had understood her predicament without picking too hard at the reasoning. “You’re a good girl, Alice,” he’d said, putting his coat around her and shoveling her into his car. “You’re a good girl.” He was trying to convince her.
    She wasn’t convinced.

    “You delivered the music. Good for you. You didn’t get permission to leave. And you wouldn’t have. But you didn’t mean to disobey, I’m sure.” Father Laverty was too good. He behaved as if you were better than you were.