This Must Be the Place: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I look forward to exploring his pathological desperation to be liked and the ensuing artistic toll on the genius of John Lennon.”
    Wendy rubbed his scar. “That leaves . . . what’s her name? Yoko Bono?”
    “You’re really witty for a sociopath,” Dani said.
    “Ringo,” Andrew said. “Ringo Starr, Wendy. OK?”
    Wendy shrugged.
    In a flurry of closing notebooks, the study group disbanded. Dani clomped through the kitchen and onto the side porch, and the relief Oneida felt upon hearing the screen door squawk behind her was palpable. If pressed, she probably wouldn’t have been able to quantify exactly what it was about Dani that drove her insane, but the cumulative effect of her gum-snapping, Beatles-trashing, obnoxiously quippier-than-thou ways incited Oneida to imagine acts of great physical violence befalling her. Oneida wouldn’t have said that she and Dani were enemies—nothing had ever occurred between them around which to base an epic loathing—but
damn
, they irritated each other.
    “You don’t like her very much, do you?” asked Andrew Lu. He stood beside her on the porch as they watched Dani Drake weave herbike down the unpaved gravel drive. His sudden proximity made her jumpy and she nodded, not trusting her voice. She needed to be comfortable around him. He wrinkled his nose and leaned into her side—he was only slightly taller, so the effect was of Andrew Lu pinning his hip to hers, like they were contestants in a three-legged race—and mumbled conspiratorially, “That makes two of us.” Then he hopped off the side porch and climbed on his own muddy bike. He even waved as he pedaled off.
    Oneida wasn’t sure it had actually happened. She raised her arm to return the wave a beat late, and ended up waving at Andrew Lu’s retreating backside. She thought about how warm he had felt when he leaned into her, how ridiculously aware she had been of his solid mass. Oneida Jones was not the kind of girl who touched other people lightly, and she didn’t take it lightly when other people touched her, no matter how fleeting the gesture. It wasn’t that she didn’t like to be touched; she just didn’t trust it, or trust herself to interpret it.
    She tucked a curl behind her ear and gnawed first on her right thumbnail, then her left. What she had wanted to happen—had it happened? Had Andrew recognized her worthy soul? Wind rustled through the trees, exposing the pale underside of the leaves. Her mother always said that when the leaves turned over, it meant a storm was coming. It was late September but it still felt like August: humid and gray, the air thick and anxious.
    A thump from behind snapped her to attention. Wendy was still in her kitchen, opening and closing the cupboard doors.
    “What are you . . . doing?” she asked, her arms popping with goose-flesh. She had volunteered for the first study session because nobody else did, plus the Darby-Jones, by its boardinghouse nature, had a perpetual open-door policy. But she felt defensive about Wendy rifling through her mother’s pots and pans—intruded upon—and her body tensed.
    He shook his soda can, the few remaining drops swishing quietly. “Just wanted to recycle,” he said. He crushed the empty can between his palms and tossed it into the sink. It made a bright metallic
clank
and Oneida frowned, thinking of the vintage porcelain basin her mother adored.
    Wendy walked right up to her and examined her face intently. Hedidn’t blink. He was less than a foot away. The only thing she could think to do was stand very, very still.
    “So,” she said, her voice catching. “Are you looking for something?”
    Wendy didn’t say anything. He stared. He still hadn’t blinked. His scar, up close, was mesmerizing, a twisted vine of white and pink that cut a half-circle down from his temple, so that his eyebrow was like a line of Morse code: a dash and a dot. Oneida focused on the scar for too long—long enough for Wendy to realize she