The Bermudez Triangle Read Online Free PDF Page B

great back—she’d actually won “best back” when they’d passed judgment when they were ten or eleven. Nina had the best hands. Mel had the best hair. Avery had the best back. Ave had balked at this, saying “best back” was a bogus consolation prize, but she was wrong. Her back was strong, not bony like Mel’s. It was flawless. It was the perfect surface.
    Stop thinking
, Mel told herself, digging around in her crumpled cup for remnants of Jell-O.
Just stop.

5
    Later that night
Avery leaned against a post of Mel’s white canopy bed and watched as she drunkenly reached for the chest of drawers and missed by several inches.
    “You want somethin’ to sleep in?” Mel asked. “I got lots of pajamas.”
    After several attempts she finally hooked her fingers onto a drawer handle and pulled out a handful of clothing. She then grandly waved Avery toward the remaining heap of cotton and fleece sleepwear. While hardly hefty, Avery didn’t have the pixie blood that seemed to run through Mel’s veins; fortunately, Mel liked oversized pajamas. Avery pawed through the offerings for something suitable while Mel got herself tangled in her own tank top. She’d only removed it halfway before attempting to pull on the T-shirt she planned on sleeping in.
    “You need help with that, Mel?” Avery asked.
    “No. I got it.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah, I got it.”
    Mel’s confusion with her tank top was growing. She wasutterly baffled, with two shirts around her neck and one arm in each one.
    “Take them both off and start over, Mel.”
    “Okay.”
    Mel carefully freed herself from the tank top, got the T-shirt on (backward, but who cared?), and squirmed out of her denim skirt. Then she tried to put both legs into a single leg space of a pair of pajama pants. It took a few tries, but she eventually managed to get them on correctly and then fall face-first onto the bed.
    “See this, Ave?” she said conspiratorially, holding up a patch-work stuffed flounder that she drew from the folds. “This is the sleepy rainbow fish. He swims you to sleepland.”
    “Drink your water, Mel.”
    “You sleep here,” Mel said, slapping at the empty spot next to her. “Okay?”
    “I’m serious. Drink that water.”
    “Know what I
really
want right now?” Mel asked.
    “What?”
    “Fritos.”
    “Uh-huh.” Looking back into the drawer, Avery decided against the pajama bottoms with the smiling M&M’s and opted instead for a more subdued plain violet pair. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea right now.”
    “We don’t have to get a big bag,” Mel said, pulling her hair into a lopsided orange geyser smack on the top of her head. “We could get one of those medium bags—the big single bags. Ortwo of those. One or two, whatever you want. Or Doritos.”
    “The water, Mel.”
    “Oh my God—or Krispy Kremes!”
    Having pulled on the pajama bottoms, Avery now found that the only shirt that looked like it would really fit was a white tank top with the word
Princess
written in gold sparkles across the chest. If her own shirt (a very fine T-shirt from Fat Ernie’s Laundromat in Ann Arbor, Michigan) hadn’t reeked so badly of smoke, she would have kept it on. Alas, the very fibers were carcinogenic now. Off it went and on went the embarrassing replacement.
    “Wanna go to the grocery store and get a seedless watermelon?” Mel said, with wide, bloodshot eyes.
    “No.”
    “Come on. It has water in it!”
    Avery walked over and handed Mel the large red plastic cup and stood there until Mel took several large swigs. The hydration seemed to tap out Mel’s energy completely, and she rested her head down against the pillow. Avery walked over to switch off the light. In the ambient light from the streetlamps and a few illegal firecrackers, Mel’s white furniture took on an ethereal glow. The canopy over the bed seemed buoyant, as if it were floating on a gentle, steady current of air.
    To make space for herself on the bed, Avery was