The Last Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

address was one she wasn't familiar with. It wasn't close to school or home.
    She pushed the model car around on her sheets, making motor noises. She'd lied about her motherbeing a race fan. Earl often talked about NASCAR drivers, and the obscene amounts of money they made. Her mother didn't like anything but the “look at all the pretty houses” channel on TV which she watched religiously in high-def like a cult member. Alice and her mother's relationship was based on mutual animosity and their conversations were hardly ever more than a swapping of sharp barbs and insults punctuated by long silences.
    The remarkably heavy toy was maybe six inches long and three wide, and the rubber wheels rolled easily. Growing bored, she placed the car on her dresser beside the large pickle jar filled to the rim with pennies.
    She undressed, and gazed at her body in the mirror. The raised but faded scars that crisscrossed her thighs were the result of cuts she'd made. A single- edge razor blade when she was younger and solidly in her Goth period had left the marks. On her stomach, the tattoo of a butterfly with its wings removed and lying beside its bleeding body was another reminder of that period. She hated it, and couldn't wait to have it removed. Her mother had offered to pay to have it taken off, but Alice had refused on principle.
    She fought an urge to get into her car, a beater Toyota, and go find Earl. He'd come around in a day or two, with his head up his ass, give her excuses, and she'd forgive him. He depended on the money her mother gave her, or she stole, for his subsistence. She doled it out as she saw fit. It was the only control she exerted on him, and was a very effective rein.
    Her mother was like some kind of parrot, cawing the same words constantly about Earl being dirty, unattractive, stupid, worthless, and a bad influence on her daughter. Okay, Earl had his faults, but he alone needed, understood, and cared about her. She took out a picture of herself and Earl taken in a dollar photo booth at the mall and smiled at his image. In the shot he was wearing a T-shirt with “Fuck you very much” on it. His eyes were crossed comically and his long fingers were making a gang sign, funny because what gang would want Earl?
    Alice thought about the man she'd sat beside on the flight and wondered if he could draw Earl from a picture. She took up her Game Boy, smiling as she imagined him opening his little briefcase and discovering the toy was gone.

EIGHT
    At six A.M. on Monday Natasha was at the hospital in her scrubs. She had just finished ster ilizing her hands for a hernia operation on a nine- year-old girl. As her surgical nurse was slipping on Dr. McCarty's left glove, Natasha's hands began to tremble gently almost imperceptibly. Panic filled her as her nurse, Gloria Ready, fixed her with a look of concern.
    “Are you all right, Dr. McCarty?” Gloria asked her.
    Natasha managed to smile reassuringly. “I'm fine, Gloria.”
    “Your hands are shaking.”
    “ Pre- op jitters,” Natasha told her.
    Natasha heard something behind her and turned to see that Dr. George Walls, the senior partner in her practice, had entered the room. There was a snap as he pulled off his glove. “Hello, Natasha, Nurse Ready.”
    “Good morning, Dr. Walls,” Gloria said, looking down.
    Walls stared at Natasha, scrutinizing her. She dropped her hands to her sides.
    “I'll be in the OR,” Gloria said, leaving.
    “Natasha, is everything all right?” George asked, frowning with concern.
    “Fine, George.”
    “Hold out your hands for me.”
    “My hands are fine,” Natasha said, feeling fear and embarrassment well up inside her.
    “Please, humor an old friend,” he insisted.
    She held out her hands and her fingers trembled slightly.
    “Your hands are uncertain,” he said firmly.
    “I don't know what this is about,” she said, on the verge of tears.
    “I'm sure you are perfectly fine, but not to perform surgery.”
    Natasha said,