The Blue Girl Read Online Free PDF

Everyone turns to look at Caroline, but she doesn’t look away, she just keeps staring at Mr. Davis, who’s gone whiter than any of us have ever seen him, white like someone who’s about to pass out right then and there.
    Rebecca grabs my hand under the table. It’s O.K ., she mouths to me, but I know how not O.K . it is. My hands are cold, but Rebecca’s fingers feel hot against them. Mr. Davis is saying something about the girl—that she’s just a rumor, an idea, that girls with blue skin don’t exist and certainly don’t live in this town and that if we know what’s best for all of us, we should study for the test. I look up at him forjust a minute, and he looks away as I think of the water on my face and the feel of the girl’s lips when I was breathing into her as hard as I could. I try to remember how it felt to take in that breath and hold it, and then give her that breath, and how good it felt, how big. That feeling is gone now, though, and I can’t get it back no matter how hard I try.

Magda
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    T O WATCH A GIRL DROWN IS A TERRIBLE THING. TO watch her being revived is even worse. To watch a girl stay blue even after she breathes again, this is the worst thing I can imagine.
    In all my years at the lake as a child, I never saw anyone drown; I never saw anyone fall into a deep pocket or even cough up swallowed water. In that lake I learned to swim, when the water still looked like glass. I taught my own children to swim in that lake when they were babies. Don’t be afraid , I said, as they kicked their little legs. It’s only water .
    I go over that day when the girl started drowning, over and over it, and still I can’t think why I didn’t help. Why I didn’t jump in, why I didn’t swim out to her, why I didn’t even try. I’ve never been afraid of water, never, not for even a minute. I knew I wouldn’t drown. If there’s one thing I’ve known all my life it’s that I won’t drown.
    I used to be one of the summer people. Used to be, but no more. I stayed. Only a few of us stay, and I am one of them. I used to love this town when I was one of the summer people, but now it’s just a summer getaway town that becomes dull when the summer people leave, like any other small town with a lake not too far from a big city. Except for the girl, who’s made everything different, even the lake where I swam as a child.
    My parents came from Russia and made money in textiles. They told me, Magda, marry well, marry safe, forget happiness; there is no happiness in marriage . Although their marriage had been arranged, they seemed happy enough endlessly playing durak, but when they took their children to the beach to watch them swim in the quiet lake, they hoped we would meet the children of privileged people. They said the kind of people who could summer in a cottage were the kind of people we should know. I remember sitting on my mother’s lap while she rubbed lemon in my hair to bring out streaks, my brothers throwing stones into the lake to make ripples and how I liked to step into the largest ripple just before it broke apart. If I could only stay inside that ripple , I used to think, anything would be possible .
    Eventually I found a way to stay. I met a townie boy with long hair and gangly limbs who made me laugh. We danced in those ripples out at that lake, and in those ripples Igot myself pregnant. My parents wept. They said, This boy will bring you no happiness, Magdalena , and I said, To hell with happiness, you said so yourself . Mama said, Said who? And I said, You did, Mama, you .
    Year after year, the town more grew increasingly dull. The summer people seemed to grow younger. The children grew. My parents died. My brothers said our parents had never seemed as happy as they had in their old age, playing durak and telling jokes in Russian. Meanwhile the townie boy became a man. He still keeps his hair long but