The Girl in the Well Is Me Read Online Free PDF

LOOK AT ME. IN YOUR FACE. But I liked it. That’s the confusing part. I liked that they were looking. I guess I have a bit of Talia in me, after all. I guess that’s another bit of me that I don’t like so much.
    Grandma wouldn’t like it either.
    After it was done, I got up from that stool and I felt lighter, better, prettier. But then I
looked
. I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, and I almost threw up my peanut butter and jelly sandwich all over the sink, which had toothpaste spit clumped by the drain. I swallowed just in time. In the mirror, I looked pale and sick and weirdly exposed. Hairless, like some kind of newborn animal that should be cute but isn’t. My freckles stood out on my white skin like flecks of blood on paper. My bangs were so high up on my forehead that I looked like someone who had just got some super-­surprising news. There were clumps and bits of hair sticking out and even one patch above my ear that looked bald.
    â€œWow,” I lied. “It’s so awesome and, like, sick.” I’d never said that word out loud before to mean “good,” and it felt dumb and wrong in my mouth. But then again, my hair looked dumb and wrong on my head. I looked dumb and wrong in the mirror. And everything about my life was totally dumb. And totally wrong. And totally sick, not in a good way.
    I forced a grin at myself in the glass, which didn’t make me look happy, it just made me look crazy. I made my smile look real by crinkling my eye corners. “Smize,” like that woman on TV always says. “Smile with your eyes.” My eyes stung with tears.
    â€œI love it,” I said again and I
almost
believed me. I loved the way it felt, that wasn’t a lie. My head was so light. Without hair, I kind of did feel like a boy, strong and wiry, in some way I hadn’t known before. “I’ll fix it at home,” I said when Amanda tried to smooth down a cowlick on my crown with her palm, like my head was suddenly her property, OK for her to touch. I dodged out from under her hand. “I know how,” I lied. “I have good hair . . . stuff.” I rubbed my fingers along the soft fraying at the hem of my shorts. It made me feel safe, like I was still me, standing there in my favorite shorts.
    I pulled my socks up to my knees and stood up. “What’s next?” I said, grinning, like I was having fun and not like I was about to puke or faint or both. I pretended not to see Kandy and Sandy whispering to each other. I pretended not to notice how they were giggling.
    I bet my socks are now covered with blood. I can’t see them, but they must still be there. I bet they are filthy and wrecked.
    Everything is filthy and wrecked.
    My shorts, my socks, me. My so-­called life.
    I try hard to not cry again. What’s the point? Mom’s a crier and it never got her anywhere. When those girls cut my hair, my biggest worry (other than how awful I looked) was how hard Mom would cry when she saw it. “Your hair,” she’d say. “What did you do?” She
loved
my hair. Even now that she was working all the time and could barely stay awake when she wasn’t, she liked to brush my hair while we watched TV together, me leaning back on the couch and her standing behind, brushing and brushing and brushing. We haven’t watched anything for a while, actually. We haven’t done it since we moved here. We haven’t seen a single episode of our favorite show,
The Singer
, since Dad went to prison. Maybe it’s not even on anymore. I wanted to ask The Girls, but I thought they’d laugh at me. Maybe watching
The Singer
isn’t cool anymore either.
    â€œHere,” Kandy said. She reached over and sprayed something onto my head. Right away, my lungs almost slammed shut. I gasped and coughed.
    â€œIt’s just hairspray,” she laughed. “Settle down.”
    The hairspray smelled like plastic and