The Cake House Read Online Free PDF Page A

up by size. She loved to make lists, then alphabetize them: lists of boys, lists of movie stars, lists of places she wanted to visit.
    Stack the books, stack the memories.
    I dug out a worn school copy of
Shakespeare’s Tragedies
mixed in with several magazines my mother purchased at supermarkets
—People
for herself,
Teen Beat
for me. I cut out the pictures from both types of magazines and taped them to the walls.
    I placed everything in short stacks in the center of the room, my clothing ringed by books and magazines, dolls and stuffed animals propped against one another. But then I changed my mind, grouping everything into small islands, needing a map to find my way to my underwear or my T-shirts. This left things messier than before, and I was overcome with a desire to toss everything out the window, to grab fistfuls of socks like baseballs and throw.
    But night had fallen, with the moon rising over the mountains. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed—thewhole day gone. It must have been midnight or later. I took a deep breath before lining everything up against each of the walls and leaving the center of my room bare and free. Laid out end to end, there were enough things to make it all the way around. There was an order to it: first my favorite shirts and jeans and shorts, then my next favorite, then the things I never wore, followed by my favorite books, my photos of Sofie and José, schoolbooks, presents from my father.
    In my closet, I hung one piece of clothing—Deputy Mike’s jacket.
    BY THE NEXT MORNING , PLASTIC covered every inch of carpet downstairs. It crackled beneath my feet as I followed the wet-clay smell of fresh paint wafting from the front room. Tinny pop music played at a low volume. A stranger in splattered overalls took a roller and sloshed it in a pan of white paint before he turned toward the far wall, moving from top to bottom. The furniture had been taken away, and someone had pulled up the carpet, stripping the room bare.
    I stood at the edge, not wanting to go in. Behind me, Claude sat on the couch in the living room, elbow deep in papers and folders with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his beeper rattling on the coffee table. He had the phone from the hallway pressed against his ear with his shoulder.
    “I’ll tell you what the secret is: Keep your eye on the future,” he was saying. “There’s poor mentality and rich mentality. Most think you have to get lucky to get rich, or you have to be dishonest. But you see, the rich,” he said, spinning a pen around and around with his fingers, catching it every time, “the rich know it’s their God-given right tobe rich. Not because they’re special or any bullshit like that. But because they’re not afraid to take it when it’s offered. This is a bull market; it’s ripe. I’m offering low risk, and a pretty goddamned steady yield. You let me worry about the details.”
    I moved into his line of vision and he turned to watch me as he continued speaking.
    “Yeah, well, do me a favor and leave it for now? I promise, tomorrow I’m all yours, and we’ll go over everything point by point. Right,” he said, and hung up.
    His beeper buzzed again, vibrating a little jig, but he ignored it.
    “You erased him,” I said.
    A look of surprise crowded around Claude’s eyes. It was the first time I’d spoken to him, and it was an accusation. I could tell he didn’t know how to react.
    “Wait here,” he said. “There’s something I want to discuss with you.” He snapped his fingers in a jokey way and moved past me to where a desk was squeezed between two bookshelves in the corner of the living room. It was an elaborate thing, made of cherrywood. I could make out the faint stenciling along its side: the image of a woman with turn-of-the-century hair, a small smile on her lips. He unlocked it with a key. The desk unfolded like a flower—the front part rolled up; then two panels hinged out to the sides.
    The desk was a trove of