Reinventing Mona Read Online Free PDF Page B

Inside, the house was a tribute to royalty with everything overdone in a European golden lacing. Hand-painted vases were the size of my toddler brothers. An oversized chessboard held hand-carved ivory pieces. Rugs looked as though they had never been walked on. Everything had a remote and unwelcoming feeling, like a museum of wealth.
    Standing in the marble-floored foyer for the first time, I must have looked like Julie Andrews walking into the von Trapp home in The Sound of Music. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here, my dear,” Grammy said with a voice that was as icy and unfamiliar to me as the Queen Mum’s. “I’ve asked Patrice to make up the room for a teenage girl. You may put your personal touches on it, of course; my only rule is that I don’t allow any Scotch tape on the walls,” she explained.
    I cannot blame Grammy for having her maid furnish my room, but I did find her timing on the no-tape rule a bit odd. It definitely could have waited until we made it out of the foyer. After losing all but one person in the only family I’d ever known, it wasn’t as though decorating the room was my primary focus. It’s not as if I spent our plane ride telling her about all the decorating-with-tape ideas I had.
    Grammy didn’t seem as though she reveled at all in the idea of being my legal guardian, much less a grandmother. I got the distinct impression that she had an entirely different vision of her retirement years.
    For the first few months after the accident, I used to play a game with myself where I’d imagine how life would be different if I’d been in the bus with the others. I closed my eyes and pictured the morning fog. I tried to imagine which sweater and turtleneck I would’ve worn to the rally. Which mittens I’d have chosen, which seat I would have taken in the bus. And there I was in my own mind, sitting beside Jessica, talking about how ridiculous these rallies were, and how no one would ever change their hard-bribed political stance on account of some past-due hippies in an aqua blue school bus. We hear the deep honk of a truck, feel a moment of sheer terror, slide out of control, crash into the truck, plunge for five seconds, and fall back into each other as our bus nosedives to the ground. I hear the crushing metal and breaking glass, and I am dead. I wonder if it hurts to die or if it’s the euphoric freeing sensation Francesca used to tell us it was. No one on our commune ever questioned how this very alive woman knew firsthand what death was like. We all just seemed to accept that since she was the oldest, she somehow knew. I wondered if we died on impact together, or if some of us grasped for life in the last few moments. I wondered who screamed. Who had the presence of mind to exchange a final thought? Who was lucky enough to have slept through the whole thing?
    I wondered what—if anything—would be different today if I’d gotten on that bus and died. After pondering this several times, I stopped playing this game. It was too depressing realizing that my life had made no significant impact on anyone.
    Patrice told Grammy she had a telephone call from the assistant headmaster at the Academy. It was just two days after Christmas, a holiday we spent having dinner at the Hotel Del Coronado and window-shopping for gifts we’d purchase the next day when the stores reopened. “Hello,” she answered, removing her clip-on mother-of-pearl earring. “Yes, Kyle.” She waited for him to speak, shifting her weight impatiently. Digging her wide patent leather heel into the plush blue carpet, she occupied her time before it was her turn to speak. “Of course I understand. What you fail to understand is that my granddaughter will start at the Academy next week. I don’t care what type of strings you have to pull.” She listened for almost a full minute. “This is so crass, Kyle. I just lost my daughter, for God’s sake. Just make this happen and of course I’ll be generous with the