Turning Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

lock the car, and in the light of the streetlamp I see that, like Drew, she’s been crying.
    “You all right?” I ask, crossing the sidewalk.
    She nods and wipes her cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m crying so much. Kate and I weren’t really close. It just seems like such a waste.”
    Mia Burke is the physical opposite of Kate Townsend. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, she stands about five-feet-two, with the muscular frame of a born sprinter. She has large dark eyes, an upturned nose, and full lips that have probably sent a hundred adolescent boys into paroxysms of fantasy. She’s wearing jeans and aLIFEHOUSE T-shirt, and she’s holding a book in her hand: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Mia has surprisingly eclectic taste, and this has probably confused the same boys who dream about her other attributes.
    “You’re right,” I murmur, thinking of Drew with very little charity. “It is a waste.”
    “Did she commit suicide, Penn?”
    It occurs to me that Mia’s use of my first name might seem inappropriate to some people. It’s always seemed a natural informality between us, but in light of what I now know about Drew and Kate, nothing seems innocent. “I don’t know. Was Kate the type to kill herself?”
    Mia hugs herself against the chill and takes some time with the question. “No. She always kept to herself a lot, especially this year. But I don’t think she was depressed. Her boyfriend was giving her a lot of trouble, though.”
    “Kate had a boyfriend?”
    “Well, an ex, really. Steve Sayers.”
    Steve Sayers, predictably, was the quarterback of the football team.
    “I don’t really know what the deal was. They dated for almost two years, then at the end of last summer Kate seemed to forget Steve existed.”
    Thanks to Drew Elliott, M.D….
    “The weird thing is, she didn’t break up with Steve. She’d still go out with him, even when she obviously didn’t care about him anymore. But she stopped having sex with him, I know that. And he was going crazy from it.”
    Mia’s frankness about sex doesn’t come out of the blue. We’ve had many frank conversations about what goes on beneath the surface at St. Stephen’s. If it weren’t for Mia’s candor, I would have as little idea of the reality of a modern high school as the rest of the parents, and would be of as little use on the school board.
    “Did Kate tell you she stopped having sex with him?” I ask.
    “No. But Steve told a couple of his friends, and it got around. He thought she might be doing stuff with someone else. Someone from another school, maybe.”
    “What did you think?”
    Mia bites her bottom lip. “Like I said, Kate was very private. She had this charming persona she could turn on, and most people bought into it. But that was just the mask she used to get through life. Deep down, she was somebody else.”
    “Who was she?”
    “I’m not sure. All I know is that she was way too sophisticated for Steve. Maybe for any guy our age.”
    I look hard into Mia’s eyes, but I see no hidden meaning there. “What made her so sophisticated?”
    “Her time in England. After her parents got divorced, she went over to London and lived with her dad for a while. She went to an exclusive school over there for three years during junior high. In the end it didn’t work out for her to stay, but when she got back here, she was way ahead of the rest of us. She was pretty intimidating with that English accent.”
    “I can’t imagine you being intimidated.”
    “Oh, I was. But last year I started catching up with her. And this year I passed her in every subject. I feel guilty saying it now, but I felt pretty good about that.”
    Some of Drew’s words are coming back to me. “You play tennis, don’t you?”
    “I’m on the team. I’m not as good as Kate. She was a machine. She won state in singles last year, and she was on her way to doing it again this year.”
    “Didn’t Kate play competitive tennis with Ellen