Stealing Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page A

would feel the same way looking at myself in a
mirror and not recognizing the reflection.
    The walls were laid out with gigantic
pictures of places and events that I knew nothing about. The
swimming-suit was tight so that it exaggerated my thinness. Sally
came out from a room near mine in a skin-tight two-piece. She was
as skinny as me. She hadn’t developed even the hint of hips or
breasts.
    “What are you doing?” she asked and came
close, looking at my reflection in the mirror and placing her hand
on my lower back.
    “It’s so strange,” I whispered. “Yesterday I
was in one life, and I’m in another completely different one
today.”
    She took my hand and dragged me away from
the mirror. “Come on,” she said, “put on some socks. You can skate
downstairs.”
    We didn’t look at the rest of my room nor
did we return through the pantry to the kitchen. We raced down a
plush carpeted spiral staircase which was wide enough to play the
splits. We passed a huge front foyer. The pine floors had been
polished so that you could slide on them in your socks. They were
protected with East Indian hand-woven carpets, but Sally and I
skated from room to room in between them. Family portraits hung on
the walls, several of Sally. One was of a bright yellow bush-plane,
floating in the middle of a small lake, with Stan standing and
waving from the right pontoon.
    Oil paintings of wild cats including a
cheetah and cougar, offset the family ones. We skated over more
pine floors, passed more pictures, and ran out through giant double
glass doors. The yard fell out into an immense deck leading to the
swimming-pool area, then into a thick group of trees hiding most of
the iron fences that ran for hundreds of feet along Rookery giving
the property privacy from the street.
    In points beyond the pool were clusters of
beautiful tall white birch trees and swirling circles of knee-high
flowers swaying in the breeze. Ignoring it all, Sally jumped
straight into the pool after taking off her socks. It was a
rectangular shaped pool, painted brilliant cool aqua-blue. It was
perhaps twenty meters long and ten wide, and surrounded by
interlaced pale blue bricks and white wooden patio furniture with
soft blue cushions.
    “Come in,” she cried. “It’s only up to
here.” She stood in the shallow end and I carefully climbed into
the pool using the ladder. The water wasn’t too cold and I jumped
up and down with Sally, keeping my legs firmly planted on the
ground. A bright blue slide ran from the shallow side into the deep
end and Sally turned on a tap which ran water over it. She climbed
the ladder and slid down, whooping it up, and though it looked like
enormous fun, I knew better than to go into the deep-end. However,
what I didn’t know was the shallow end, stopped abruptly.
    I heard a splash behind me, it was Stan, and
I lost my footing, shooting over the lip. When my feet touched
bottom, I’d gone over my head, but kicked myself to the surface.
Doing so, I put myself even further out. I went down splashing and
kicking, swallowing a mouthful of water. I remembered I thought I
was going to die. That’s how drowning happens when you don’t know
anything about swimming. It is a mystery to the ignorant. Powerful
arms, snapped me back into the shallow end and I stood in the pool,
sputtering and coughing. Drawing breath was very difficult.
    “Sweetie, when you’re in the pool with
Christian,” Stan said to Sally, “you’ll have to watch out for him.
You’ll have to turn-off your selfish button. Okay, sweetie?”
    She nodded and drew up, holding my hand.
“What happened?” Mary asked from the lip of the pool, wearing a one
piece bathing suit which was grey and modest but didn’t hide her
fine figure.
    “He took in a mouthful of water,” Stan
said.
    I recovered and Mary taught me to tread
water before supper as Stan and Sally dove from the deep end and
swam around us. Mary was polite and her voice warmed up with every
passing minute.