The Anatomy of Wings Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the children died was the Martins and that child was Ben and he got run over by a truck and sometimes kids went to look for the stain of him on the road.
    “Let's start again,” said Angela. “I don't think the blue hair combs were a real clue.”
    “Der,” I said.
    “I wish you'd take this seriously.”
    Mrs. Popovitch came to the bedroom door. She was very pretty with long amber hair. She wore see-through caftan tops, which Aunty Cheryl said was an absolute disgrace. She smoked roll-your-owns instead of tailor-mades like my mother. She gave Angela a look from the door and then gave me a look too. The look she gave me was one I was getting used to. Angela's sisters, Rolanda and Natasha, looked atme the same way. It was with sadness and interest and pity all rolled up into a neat face with a smile. No one ever mentioned Beth's name.
    Now I knew what it must have felt like to be the brother or sister of Ben Martin when they saw children whispering and planning excursions to see the stain of their brother on the highway.
    On the first day back at school Mrs. Bridges-Lamb was on lunch duty and she came up to Angela and me where we were practicing Classic Catches on the parade ground. She told us it would be better to do it on the oval rather than on the cement. I hadn't talked to her since the year before. The last thing she had ever said to me was “And what does three-sixths equal?”
    This time she asked me how I was traveling as though I was on some kind of holiday. I said not too bad and I might have said more—for example, that my mother mostly just sat in the recliner and watched television and didn't brush her hair—but some kids thought we were getting into trouble so a crowd had gathered to watch.
    When it was my turn to collect the cafeteria basket I heard the cafeteria ladies inside talking about Beth. When I rang the bell the lady who came looked very ashamed but tried to cover it up by patting me on the head and I felt like growling and biting her hand.
    Our new teacher, Mr. Barnes, was not very strict and didn't watch us the way Mrs. Bridges-Lamb had watched us, which was very carefully. When Mrs. Bridges-Lamb watched us she wore her glasses and she did not move her head. Her eyes moved, though. They were a flat gray-green and impenetrable as a crocodile's. They slid slowly from side to side.
    When Mrs. Bridges-Lamb took off her glasses and began to wipe them with her handkerchief it meant someone was in trouble but first she had to think about it. Without her glasses her eyes were smaller. She peered into the classroom as though we were all in the distance. She forgot about not moving her head. She moved it from side to side, slightly, like a snake listening.
    Aunty Cheryl had heard Mr. Barnes was very laissez-faire and thought we might all go wild after being so strictly schooled the year before. It made me think of the whole class suddenly going crazy and hanging out windows. I wished I could have told Nanna because it was the sort of thing that would have made her laugh but we were banned from visiting her because she was a religious maniac. I hadn't seen her since the day of the funeral.
    The
Merit Students Encyclopedia
didn't have an entry on famous maniacs, which I had hoped for, but the dictionary said a maniac was an obsessive enthusiast. That made me think of when Nanna made mehelp her take out all her Virgin Mary statuettes and put them in the bathtub full of soapy water and they bobbed there like a boatload of ladies lost at sea. And after we had tea-towel-dried them she kissed each one and they all went back into the glass cabinets beside the ceramic dogs, which would get bathed another day.
    After Mrs. Popovitch was gone Angela lay back on her red velvet bedspread and opened up
The Book of Clues.
She took the pencil from behind her ear.
    “What happened after the lake?” she asked a little quieter.
    “Nothing,” I said.
    Angela raised her eyebrows.
    And everything.
    When Beth met