The Marriage of Sticks Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t.”
    Where was my wisdom? I kept licking my lips and scouring my brain but nothing came. She continued to look blankly in the mirror, as if seeing her face for the first time.
    The door opened and Kathy Herlth sauntered in. She was as gorgeous as ever but still carried the icy wind of disdain for everything on earth that froze the rest of us humanity to death.
    “God, did you see Kevin Hamilton? He’s got to change his lobotomist! He’s standing out there talking like a Klingon. Sort of looks like one too.”
    It was so cruel and true that Zoe coughed out a huge laugh. I did too.
    Kathy shrugged. “I knew I shouldn’t have come to this. It’s so depressing. You two have sure come full circle tonight. Kevin’s mad and James is dead. That ends that chapter, huh?”
    “What?” The word came out much slower than I wanted. My hand froze as I was about to wipe tears of laughter off my cheek. I looked at my hand when she spoke again. It had already made a fist. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything.
    She looked surprised. “What do you mean? About what?”
    “About James.”
    “James? What about him? Oh God, Miranda, didn’t you know ? He’s dead. He died three years ago. In a car crash.”
    Everything was so clear, incredibly sharp and accentuated: Zoe’s gasp, the sound of water hissing in the sink, Kathy’s high-heel scrape across the tile floor. Their faces—Kathy’s cool but interested, Zoe shocked beyond her own new trauma. These things were clear, but some essential part of me had already left. Something left my body and floating high above the room looked down, taking one last glimpse before leaving forever.
    The part that had loved James Stillman with the energy and abandon only beginners have. The part that had smoked twenty delicious cigarettes a day, laughed too loud, didn’t worry about dangerous things. The part that wondered what sex would be like and who would be the first. The part that looked too long in mirrors at the only flawless face I would ever see there.
    Fearless teenage me, so sure one day I’d find a partner with whom my heart would rest happily ever after. A man I would put on like lotion. James taught me that, showed me great happiness was possible right from the beginning. He was dead.
    “Jesus, Miranda, I thought you knew. It happened so long ago.”
    “How—” I stopped to swallow. My throat was dry as cork. “Um, how did it happen?”
    “I don’t know. Diana Wise told me. But she’s here tonight! You can ask. I saw her before.”
    Without another word, I walked out of the room. Zoe said something but I kept going. I needed to find Diana Wise immediately. Without the facts, a precise description, James Stillman’s death would stay liquid in my brain and it had to be solid, real.
    Hadn’t the ballroom been billiard-chalk blue before I’d gone into the bathroom? Blue with white borders? I could have sworn it was; yet now it was a weak ocher, the color of young carrots. Even the colors had changed with the terrible news.
    People mulled around talking, laughing, and dancing. Tonight they could be eighteen and thirty-three at the same time. It was wonderful. Mouths were full of teeth and shiny tongues. Words surrounded me as I moved. I felt like a visitor from another planet.
    “They moved to Dobbs Ferry—”
    “I haven’t seen him since, Jesus, I don’t know—”
    “The whole house was carpeted with the most ugly brown shag—”
    When we were eighteen, people still listened to records. There were three speeds on a record player: 33⅓, 45, and 78. The only time you ever used 78 was when you wanted to laugh. You turned it up there and played 45s on it. Hearing familiar voices transformed to a high silly chirp was always good for a laugh. As I walked more and more quickly through the room searching for Diana, thinking about James, thinking about him dead, the world around me switched to 78. Voices became a speeded-up muddle. This whizzing chaos became