Vassa in the Night Read Online Free PDF

really out of character. Barely.
    Or, more like, not really. Or even, I’d say, not at all.
    I should have tried to know him better. We should be wandering together now, saying that we truly will get out of here someday. Reminding each other that it’s a big planet and if we can just hang in there we’ll both see a lot more of it.
    We should have been friends.
    Our nights drag on endlessly, but our days are just as perishable as ever. My street, like all the streets around here, runs smack into the stone wall that outlines the Evergreen Cemetery. Block after block, if you try to get through that way you bash against a yellow sign that just says END . Then on top of the stone wall there’s a chain-link fence, letting us look in on the elaborate marble tombs with their columns and swags of stone drapery and their perfectly carved climbing roses: these gorgeous miniature mansions. Around here it’s the dead who are living large. On the living side of the fence we have plastic kids’ bikes wedged into the balconies of burned-out apartment buildings. Mosaics of garbage and broken glass in the mud. So it’s not too surprising that I tend to wind up wandering around the graves. It reminds me that there are always options.
    I spend hours walking up and down the cemetery’s hills with their ranks of spiky white angels. One tomb has a crack-faced statue of a girl, leaning sideways and sunk in the turf up to her knees; I almost feel like I should try to help her climb out. Below me the train station perches on its mess of tracks, and this tinny synthetic voice keeps echoing up and telling the dead how long they have to wait for the next train. There’s a bench where I sit reading, then I walk down to a donut shop in the late afternoon—chocolate glazed and a cup of coffee for me, a heinous pink-sprinkled custard-filled blob for Erg—lingering at my outside table until the twilight starts rolling in and I get too hungry and chilled to ignore it anymore. Going home means facing Chelsea’s kindhearted efforts to patch up my leaking psyche and Steph’s conviction, I bet, that I’m beyond repair, and Iliana too tired and worried to deal with any of it. “Erg? I don’t know if I can go home.”
    She jumps in my pocket. “Sure you can! It’s dinnertime!”
    â€œMaybe it’s time for us to get out of here. Just get on a bus and go.” I hesitate. “I guess you’d have to swipe our bus fare, though. I only have like ten bucks.” I’ve never asked Erg to steal for me before, but since she started the trouble at home she might as well help get me out of it.
    â€œOh, no. Nonono, Vassa. Go home. It’ll be fine.” Her voice wheedles from my right hip. A few times people have heard her and thought that I had a phone with a really weird ringtone.
    â€œYou don’t understand what this is doing to me, Erg. Every time they look at me I feel sick because I know what they’re thinking. I just want to get out and start over, and maybe next time you won’t—”
    â€œVassa,” Erg says firmly, “it’s going to be fine. As long as we’re together, you’ll be fine. And we’ll be together forever! So stop worrying!”
    â€œI think you’re missing the point here, dollface. Us being together is what’s making things totally not fine.”
    â€œVaaaasssaaa.” She practically sings it. “Go home. Trust me. Anyway nobody’s home but your stepmom, and she’s asleep. Okay?”
    The surprising thing is that when Erg says something like this she’s always right. Anyway, if I do decide to run away, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pack a bag first. “Okay for now. I’m not promising anything for later, though.”
    â€œI can take care of later,” Erg squeaks primly. “I’ve got everything under perfect control.”
    It’s true, the apartment is totally