The Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

collection of small colorful beach stones in a jade jar; three votive candles, never lit, on small red plates; and an empty teak box. In lieu of a closet, Anlya had a wardrobe with a mirrored front along the right-hand wall. Her backpack, stuffed with schoolbooks, class binders, tennis shoes, a couple of pairs of plain white underwear, and a light sweater, huddled in the corner.
    Shehad made her bed, pulling up a pale green comforter with the wrinkles patted out and squared off at the corners. The pillow was fluffed, perfectly centered on the bed, and covered with a lacy white case. Three books sat on a bedside table made out of cinder blocks and driftwood. A poster of Nelson Mandela hung on the wall over the bed’s pillow; on the remaining wall, she had two other posters, Beyoncé and Obama.
    Of the books on the bedside table, two were paperbacks—one of the Twilight books and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings —and the other, at the bottom of the stack, was a leather-bound hardback. This turned out to be a diary and, from the looks of it, one that she’d written in nearly every day.
    May 6, 2014
    I decided that if I wanted him to really know me, and really love me for who I am, I had to tell G. all about what really happened with L., how far it went. G. needs to know that I’m damaged goods, not so that he can forgive me, since it really wasn’t my fault and there’s nothing to forgive, but just so he isn’t under any illusions, thinking I’m all young and don’t know what it’s really all about. I mean, the whole thing of having to be eighteen to be legal shouldn’t really apply to me since everything that could happen already has happened, and when I was fourteen and fifteen.
    I’m just still so surprised and happy that I have these feelings of wanting to get together with G., that I’m not just sickened and turned off forever by the idea of sex because of how it was when L. was hounding me. I feel like I’ve come out the other side of this nightmare, that some kind of real life is going to be possible, that some righteous man might find me attractive and worthwhile.
    I’m going to tell him tomorrow. How I really feel. Not have him need to guess about it anymore. We have a real date and we’ll be alone and I know it won’t scare him off. If he needs to wait until I’m eighteen, okay, we’ll wait, but at least he’ll know for sure where I stand and we can take things from there.
    Maybewe can even start living together when my time runs out here.
    Hopes and more hopes.
    •  •  •
    “I ’LL TELL YOU what,” Waverly said as they got into their car after they’d finished their search, “I’d like to have a talk with this guy L., not to mention G.”

8
    A BE G LITSKY WAS a lifelong policeman, and even in plainclothes, all six feet two inches of him looked it. He weighed two hundred and twenty pounds and came across as rock-solid, no-nonsense, more than a bit sardonic. He’d been everything from patrolman to Homicide lieutenant to deputy chief of inspectors, and for the past few months—after a squabble with Vi Lapeer, the chief of police, had led to his resignation—he’d been nominally under Wes Farrell’s command as an inspector with the DA’s Investigative Division. Abe’s father was Jewish, his mother had been African-American, and he split the difference about equally between them, with milk chocolate skin, kinky hair, blue eyes, and a prominent nose. Easily trumping all of his other distinguishing characteristics was the slash of white scar that ran top to bottom through his lips, which he let people believe was the result of a knife fight sometime in his misbegotten youth, although its true source had been a grade school playground accident on the climbing bars.
    Glitsky’s wife was Wes Farrell’s administrative assistant, Treya. At the close of business, Wes came out of his door to find Abe sitting on the edge of Treya’s desk.
    “You busy?” Wes