The Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

the mirror to the pile, planning to put it all in Momma’s box for the homeless in the morning. I hoped the things didn’t carry their bad feelings with them. That’s all some homeless person needs, I thought—a mirror that makes you hurt whenever you look into it.

Renée
    W E’D BEEN TALKING about teachers from school, trying to imagine what kind of kids they’d been. Trying to imagine them our age, going to our school. It was funny picturing Mr. Adler, the principal, in regular clothes, acting like a boy. But then I noticed that Candace had stopped talking. She was just looking at the fire, not even listening to us.
    I wondered if I’d said something to upset her, if any of us had. Then, without another word she burrowed into her sleeping bag and went to sleep. So maybe she wasn’t mad or hurt or anything; maybe she was just sleepy. After that, conversation drifted off and soon everyone was asleep but me.
    That always happened. I was always the last one awake at home too. When my dad still lived with us, I could never fall asleep until I heard his key in the front door. He was a jukebox man. Well, he had a lot of other kinds of vending machines besides jukeboxes, but that’s what he called himself. He had jukeboxes and video games and pool tables in bars on the other side of town. When a machine broke or something, his answering service would call and out he’d go to fix it. No matter how late.
    No one exactly told me that Dad’s machines were in dangerous bars and bad neighborhoods, but I knew it. He hadn’t taken me out on his route with him in years, but I still remembered the men slumped on bar stools, drunk in the middle of the day. I remember the way those bars smelled. I remember him taking the quarters out of a jukebox and dividing them up with the bartender. I also remember thinking that if he didn’t have to support me , he wouldn’t have to go to those places.
    And on the nights when my dad wasn’t on a service call, I’d still lie awake until he and my mom were asleep. I could always tell the second they were sleeping. Not just because their TV or their light went off or because they were finished fighting—but because there was a feeling, like the entire house had stopped holding its breath.
    That’s how it felt at Darcy’s too. I knew her parents were sleeping. I knew her sister, Keloryn, was sleeping. All the girls around me were making little sleep noises like a basket of puppies. The fire in the fireplace was down to embers.
    I wondered if Maya was sleeping. Maybe she was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Maybe she was crying.
    Darcy’s sister probably thought I was as bad as the rest of them, and she was right. I knew what animal I was—I was a chicken. Otherwise, I would have said something. I would have stopped Darcy from calling Maya. Or I would have grabbed the phone and apologized to her.
    After Darcy had made those calls, and we were going into the den to spread out our sleeping bags, Candace had whispered to me, “Sometimes Darcy’s so fierce ! Maybe we should enroll her in obedience school.”
    I wasn’t sure what she’d meant. Fierce for making those mean calls? Obedience school, like a dog? So she’d obey her master better? Her master was Candace, right? I shivered. I hadn’t said anything, but Candace must have seen my confusion, because as I put my sleeping bag next to hers she added, “There’s really no reason to be mean to someone, just because you despise them.”
    I should have said something right then. If I hadn’t been such a chicken I would have said, “But you were mean to Maya.” Or had she been? Had Candace said bad things to Maya, or just about her? It was almost as if Candace were the queen, condemning Maya to death, and Darcy was the one who carried out the order. The executioner—an executioner who loved her work. And what did that make