The American Girl Read Online Free PDF

steered into a ditch but I didn’t stop. I kept on driving, forcing the little car back on course. I could feel the sweat streaming down my collar. By the time I was straight and steady again, the red taillights of the other car were just visible in the distance like the eyes of a demon dog. Then they left me in darkness.
    Everything around—the white moths shivering in the headlights, the treetops soughing in the wind, the bats, the night noises—fucking everything gave me the creeps. I droveon instinct alone. No higher brain function available. Just getting towards people, lights, civilization as fast as I could, away from the silent house and whoever was in there with me. Twice I drove into one of the loose-dirt ditches that run the length of the narrow roads, once out of sheer nerves, once because a car came straight at me around a bend, headlights blazing, radio blaring. We almost crashed. I swerved. It was only sitting in the ditch, the other car’s horn blaring angrily into the distance, that I realized I was on the wrong side of the road. I sat, took a deep breath, took out a cigarette.
    I pride myself on my stoic nature. I always have, from my tree-climbing, bottle-rocket-building childhood onward. I talk straight. I swear loud. I honor promises. Like John Wayne, but female and much less right wing. If you asked me to describe myself in a word it would be tough . Or bitch . Or maybe tough bitch , but after the scrabble out of the Blavette house, the headlights on the way home, it took a full ten minutes until my hands stopped shaking enough that I could light that cigarette.
    I couldn’t help wondering if it was Monsieur Raymond who had opened the door at the house, followed me along the dark road. Take it from your unreliable narrator: there was something creepy about that creepy caretaker. No way of knowing for sure, though.
    My phone binged at me from its plastic rest on the dash. A message popped up—Bill asking if I was still alive.
    I tapped to call him. He picked up after two rings but didn’t say anything. “Hey, Bill. You good?”
    â€œWho wants to know?” He sounded cranky. A couple of days without checking in, and already the sarcasm had begun.
    â€œMe, Molly,” I said with a laugh, taking a drag of my cigarette, my eyes flicking nervously to the rearview to see if anyone was there. “You losing the plot without me there?”
    â€œFlattery will get you everywhere, you know,” he said in the deadpan tone I knew and loved.
    â€œThat how I ended up working for you for peanuts?”
    â€œHa. You got anything on this girl yet?”
    â€œYeah. But listen, I gotta go,” I said, turning the ignition.
    â€œYou okay? You sound . . .”
    â€œCall you later.” I hung up and turned out into the road.
    I knew St. Roch was a short drive from the Blavette house, but nonetheless it seemed like a very long while before my poor car juddered to a halt outside the Overlook—the seen-better-days hotel Bill had booked me a room in. Actually, the only hotel in town, a grand old turn-of-the-century building with a comfy three-star hotel inside. Its original name, Le Napoléon, better befit its air of seedy hubris.
    But I love a fleapit, and the Orwellian level of journalistic commitment it implies. I love that you meet people from all walks of life, that you can drink out of a paper bag or eat pizza or smoke cigarettes (hell, probably even crack) in your room. Most of all, I love that there are people inside and the lights are always on.
    After the trauma at the Blavette house, I felt that life owed me a pack of Gauloises and a whiskey. My room in the Napoléoncan just about sustain a guest edging around the single bed to turn on the TV or open the door, and the pissoir is so closely situated that you can practically use it from the bed if you’ve got good aim. You can also turn the TV on with one toe as you smoke out the window. So