The Drowning Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

There was clothing (mostly T-shirts, jeans, and women’s underwear) stuffed haphazardly into still more boxes.There were two wooden kitchen chairs, a coffeemaker, a dinged-up nightstand, a floor lamp missing its shade, and, well, other things. I guessed someone had been evicted and their belongings tossed out on the street. It happens, though not as much on this side of town as over on College Hill. I was surprised there wasn’t a mattress, because there’s almost always a mattress and box springs. I propped my umbrella against a telephone pole and began picking through the boxes. A good thing it
hadn’t
rained, because then everything would have been ruined.
    I’d long since learned that it pays to scavenge the castaway belongings of people who haven’t paid their rent, who’ve left everything behind and moved on. Half my apartment is furnished with castoffs, and I once found a first edition of
The Great Gatsby
and a stack of 1940s
Superman
comics tucked inside the drawer of an old chifforobe. A used bookstore downtown paid me almost enough for the lot to cover a month’s rent. Anyway, I’d just started sorting through the books—mostly science fiction and fantasy—when I heard footsteps and looked up. A tall girl was crossing Wood Street, her black boots clopping loudly against the asphalt. The first thing I noticed was how pretty she was, in an androgynous Tilda Swinton sort of way. The second thing I noticed was that she looked really, really pissed off.
    “Hey!” she shouted when she was still only halfway across the road. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
    She was looming over me before I was able to think of an answer. Abalyn is close to six feet tall, which means she has a good five inches on me.
    “Is this stuff yours?” I asked, wondering if her short hair was really that black or if she dyed it.
    “Hell yeah, it’s mine,” she said, and snatched a paperback out of my hands. I would say that she growled, but that might be misleading, like Dexter Training Grounds and the Armory. “What makesyou think you can come along and start rummaging through someone else’s shit?”
    “I thought it was abandoned,” I said.
    “Well, it’s not.”
    “I thought it was just junk,” I added.
    “If it was just junk, what the hell would you want with it?” she demanded, and I realized that her eyes were green. Not green like the trees along Parade Street, but green like shallow seawater in winter rushing over granite cobbles, like waves on the floating, shapeless oceans, or green like the polished lumps of beach glass that used to be Coca-Cola or 7Up bottles. A green that was almost, but not quite, blue.
    “Well, if it’s not junk, then why’s it piled out here on the curb like it
is
junk?”
    “Oh, my fucking god,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “Where does that get to be any of your business?”
    She glared at me, and I thought for a second or two that she would either punch me in the face or turn around and walk away. Instead, she just dropped the paperback into a different box than the one I’d taken it from and dragged her fingers through that black, black hair, which I’d decided had to be dyed. Also, I’d decided maybe she was a few years older than me.
    “Honestly, I didn’t know it was yours. I didn’t know it was still anybody’s. I’m not a thief.” Then I pointed up at the cloudy sky. “You know, it might start raining any minute, so you should probably take all this inside somewhere before it gets wet and ruined.”
    She made that face again, like maybe she was going to punch me after all.
    “I’m waiting on someone,” she said. “A friend of mine, he has a truck, and he promised me he’d be here two and a half hours ago.” She scowled and glanced down Wood Street towards the park. “I’m going to store everything in his garage.”
    “So, where do you think he is?” I asked, even though she was right, and none of this was my business. I think it was the