Pieces of Hate Read Online Free PDF Page B

drive-through window of a Burger King and bought her breakfast — she was ravenous — and when she got to the hospital, she stopped at the gift shop to buy a bouquet of flowers in a sparkling vase.
    Lynda was asleep when Margaret walked into the room, so she put the vase and her fast-food breakfast on the bed table, then went to the window and opened the blinds. Then she turned to the bed, put her hands on the side rail and looked down at Lynda, who only stirred slightly. When Lynda did not wake, Margaret went around the bed, seated herself in the chair and began to eat her breakfast. She almost never ate fast food because she was always watching her diet, and she’d never eaten the fat-loaded food from any of the major burger chains, but she found it deliciously decadent. She was still so hungry halfway through her second Croissandwich that she wished she’d ordered a third.
    “Oh, how long have you been here?” Lynda asked, propping herself up on an elbow quite suddenly, her eyes squinty with sleep.
    “Not long,” Margaret said with her mouth full. She smiled. “I’m eating a junk food breakfast. And you know what? It’s great! I didn’t know what I was missing.”
    Lynda gasped. “Flowers!”
    “Oh, yeah, I brought those for you. I thought you could use something pretty in here, something that stinks nice.”
    Grasping the side rail, Lynda lifted herself into a sitting position with surprising ease as she stared at the flowers.
    “You’re wonderful!” she squealed girlishly. “Oh, they’re gorgeous, really, Margaret. Thank you so much.”
    Margaret was eating her bite-sized hash browns. “No problem. Hey, would you like some of this?”
    Lynda reached behind her to fluff up her pillows, then sat up against the headboard. She smiled and said, “It sure smells good. But I’m afraid that if I eat any of it, I’ll puke all over you.”
    “Oh. Well, in that case . . . never mind.”
    Laughing, Lynda reached up to straighten the bandana on her head. “This thing’s crooked,” she grumbled quietly.
    “Why do you wear it? If . . . you don’t mind my asking.”
    “Not at all. I wore a wig for a while. I don’t know which is more humiliating — being bald or wearing some stupid curly helmet that everybody knows is a wig. So, I settled for this. It’s a compromise. I know I don’t have hair, and they know I don’t have hair . . . but I don’t have to show everybody my ugly bald head.”
    “What’s ugly about it? Didn’t you see that Star Trek movie? Persis Khambata was completely bald, and she was gorgeous.”
    Lynda laughed and leaned on her side to watch her sister as she ate her two orders of hash browns.
    “How do you stay so thin eating that kind of stuff?” Lynda asked.
    “Listen, sweetie, after you’ve spent years sticking your finger down your throat to puke up food, and after years of taking laxatives and going on crash diets, every once in a while you deserve to give yourself a break without any guilt. I’ll work it off.”
    Lynda sat up a little straighter, looking concerned. “You did all that? I mean . . . the throwing up and the laxatives? You did that to yourself?”
    “To get thin? I would have done anything. Finally, I decided on just changing my life, my diet, my . . . schedule. I haven’t had food like this in a long time, and it’s delicious.”
    “Did you . . . do it because of . . . me?”
    Margaret looked at her sister’s face and saw sadness and worry. She reached over and covered Lynda’s hand with hers on the side rail. “No, not because of you. I did it because of me, because I was fat. But I’m not fat anymore, am I?”
    Lynda put her other hand on Margaret’s and grinned. “My God, Maggie, you look fantastic. Really. You’re so pretty!”
    “Oh, get out of here. I slept in my car on the way here! I hardly slept at all last night . . . I look like I fell out of the back end of a sick horse.”
    “Stop it!” Lynda said with a giggle, slapping