The Invisibles Read Online Free PDF Page B

structure. The wide wraparound porch they used to sit on, Ozzie’s legs dangling over the side, skimming the tops of the rhododendron bushes beneath, had almost rotted away to nothing. When Monica had gone through her “I’d rather die than be fat” stage, she used to hook her toes under the railings and do sit-ups until she couldn’t breathe. Now the porch floor had sunk to the ground and the railing spindles, formerly delicate white arms, had collapsed intojagged stumps. Behind the house, the grass was waist-high, but back then it had been a lawn, neatly trimmed around the edges and flanking the east side of the river. Nora walked around to one side of the house. She stared past the weeds, tall as grown men, until she could see Grace and herself that last week, before everything happened.
    T hey’d walked to one of their favorite spots, a place where the ground dipped down into a wide sort of basin and three birch trees, their trunks wide as flagpoles, draped the surrounding area in shade. It was a particular spot where Grace liked to sit and draw. A forgotten section of railroad tracks sat less than a stone’s throw away, obscured by tufts of weeds, and the bank itself, which sloped toward the water, was sprinkled with blue cornflowers. Nora thought there were more attractive places—just a hundred feet behind them was an entire field full of black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace—but Grace always insisted that the light in this particular spot was perfect. Whole, she called it. Untainted.
    The weather had been gauzy-warm, a breeze soft as cotton breathing over everything. Grace was looking at a book of photography, flipping the glossy pages slowly as she examined each face, every picture with a studied intensity. A large sketch pad, which she brought with her everywhere, lay next to her, along with a variety of charcoal pens. She had rolled up the sleeves of her T-shirt, exposing her bony arms, and a lone pencil stuck out from the bun in her hair.
    Nora lay next to her, one arm draped over her face to avoid the glare of the sun, the hand of the other arm dipping intermittentlyinto a bag of sunflower seeds. She was reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, hooked by the stunning first line: “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” It was already in her notebook.
    â€œDo you think people who die can still feel love?” Grace asked, turning from her book to look at Nora.
    Nora cracked a sunflower shell between her teeth. “Yeah, I guess.” She was at a good part in the book where the main character—a girl named Antoinette—was about to meet the man she was supposed to marry.
    â€œNo, really.” Grace’s hair, which was the color of corn silk, curled in wisps around the side of her face, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Her bare legs, thin as pins, were crossed at the ankles. “You know, some people think that if we can’t get into heaven when we die, our spirits just sort of drift in and out of the universe. Do you think those spirits can feel things? Like love?”
    â€œUh-huh.” Nora kept reading. Grace talked this way a lot—she loved ethereal things like heaven and hell and beauty and God, things, Nora assumed, that must have been passed down by her mother. She kept a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary under her pillow, a glossy rectangular head shot of a lovely dark-skinned woman with a blue mantle over her head, downcast eyes, and lips the color of an overripe peach—something she had never explained to Nora, and about which Nora had never asked.
    â€œAre you even listening to me?” Grace poked Nora in the ribs.
    Nora put the book down and stared at the river. The water was a gunmetal gray for some reason, dark and foreboding despite the sunlight. In one more week, her best friends in the entire world were going to leave Willow Grove forever. Talking had