Ring of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I’ve always wanted a mirror like this.” She stares at it with a dreamy look on her face. Standing at the door, Elettra watches her and smiles, happy to be able to share in that little emotion.
    “And just think, I almost never use it …,” she says.
    “Why not?”
    “I’ve got sort of a problem with mirrors,” Elettra says with a sheepish smile. “The more I use them, the more … the more they lose their shininess and turn dull.”
    Mistral laughs. “You’re joking, right?”
    “No. And that’s not all. I burn out lightbulbs and all kinds of electrical devices. So for me, a mirror surrounded by lightbulbs is a sort of … minefield.”
    Her curiosity piqued, Mistral asks her a few questions, laughing with amusement at this oddity. Her triangular face reflected amid the lightbulbs is a portrait of tranquility itself. And so, as Elettra answers her questions, she’s very happy to gradually do away with her label of wimp, replacing it with a more positive one: romantic dreamer.
    “What are you thinking?” the French girl asks her, resting her hands on the edge of the sink.
    Elettra snaps out of it. “Huh?”
    “It’s like you were looking at me through a magnifying glass … or am I wrong?”
    “Oh, no, sorry. It’s just been a long time since …” Elettra gathers her hair in both hands and lets it tumble back down onto her shoulders. “Since I shared this room with a friend.”
    Mistral smiles in reply, making a vague gesture with her hand. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Because of my mother’s job, I’m alone a lot, too. And as soon as I’m around other people, I get the feeling I’m being ripped apart and judged.”
    “I wasn’t ripping you apart, believe me. Quite the opposite.”
    “Just pretend I didn’t even say it.”
    “Okay,” Elettra says, changing the subject, “so what does your mother do?”
    “She works with perfume,” Mistral explains. “That is, she makes it.”
    “She makes perfume? How?”
    “Oh, hopefully I’ll learn that when I’m older. You need to go to a special school. The one I want to go to is called International Flavors and Fragrances.”
    “You mean there are perfume schools?”
    “In France, yes.”
    “And where’s the one you like?”
    “In Grasse, a town on the Côte d’Azur. They’ve been making perfume there for hundreds of years. It’s not easy, believe me. To become a perfumer you need to study a lot. You need to know how to tell the difference between the various fragrances in the right categories. There are perfumes that affect the mind, the heart, the spirit, which are light and soft, and then there are earthy ones, which last the longest. Perfumes can be sharp, sweet, sandy, natural, chemical. … It’s enough to make your head spin!”
    “Wow,” murmurs Elettra, fascinated. “I didn’t know there were people who … who were actually trained to make perfumes.”
    As the two girls are talking about the smell of lavender and the large copper stills used to distill rose water, there is a second knock on the door.
    It’s Sheng, already in his pajamas. The Chinese boy with a pageboy haircut that looks like it was cut with a bowl is sporting cheerful, blue-striped, two-piece pj’s and a pair of cumbersome red gym shoes.
    “I forgot my slippers at home,” he explains at once, noticing the girls’ bafflement.
    Elettra goes to shut the door, but Sheng tells her that Harvey, the American, is on his way down, too. “I heard footsteps in the hall behind me.”
    And, in fact, a few moments later, Harvey appears in the doorway. Despite his height, he’s all hunched over, as though he has a world of problems hanging from his neck. And his hair is over his eyes, as though he doesn’t want to see anything except his feet. “I haven’t got any pajamas,” he says, looking at Sheng’s striped pj’s. “Is that okay?”
    “How are you going to sleep without them?”
    “I’ll just stay in my undershirt and boxers,” he answers,