Vinegar Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

lab coat had confused her; he was wearing jeans and a plain gray jersey. “Hi!” he said as he arrived next to her. (“Khai,” it sounded like.)
    “Peter,” she said.
    “Pyotr.”
    “How’re you doing,” she said.
    “I fear I may be having cold,” he told her. “My nose waters and I sneeze a great deal. Has been taking place since last night.”
    “Bummer,” she said.
    She resumed walking, and he fell into step alongside her. “It was a good day at your school?” he asked.
    “It was okay.”
    They were right on the heels of the young couple now. Lindy ought to just dump the guy, the girl was saying, he was making her unhappy; and the boy said, “Oh, I don’t know, she seems all right to me.”
    “Where are your
eyes
?” the girl asked him. “The whole time they’re together she keeps looking into his face and he keeps looking away. Everybody’s noticed it—Patsy and Paula and Jane Ann—and finally my sister came right out and
said
to Lindy; she said—”
    Pyotr briefly clamped Kate’s upper arm to steer her around them. It startled her for a moment. He was barely taller than Kate, but she had trouble matching his stride, and then she wondered why she was trying and she slowed her pace. He slowed too. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” she asked him.
    “Yes! I am just going.”
    Since the lab lay two blocks in the opposite direction, this didn’t make any sense, but that was no concern of hers. She glanced at her watch. She liked to get home before Bunny, who was not supposed to entertain boys when she was alone but sometimes did anyhow.
    “In my country we have proverb,” Pyotr was saying.
    Didn’t they always, Kate thought.
    “We say, ‘Work when it is divided into segments is shorter total period of time than work when it is all together in one unit.’ ”
    “Catchy,” Kate said.
    “How long you have been letting your hair grow?”
    The change of subject took her aback. “What?” she said. “Oh. Since eighth grade, maybe. I don’t know. I just couldn’t take any more of that Chatty Cathy act.”
    “Chatty Cathy?”
    “In the beauty parlor. Talk, talk, talk; those places are
crawling
with talk. The women there start going before they even sit down—talk about boyfriends, husbands, mothers-in-law. Roommates, jealous girlfriends. Feuds and misunderstandings and romances and divorces. How can they find so much to say? I could never think of anything, myself. I kept disappointing my beautician. Finally I went, ‘Shoot. I’ll just quit getting my hair cut.’ ”
    “It is exceedingly attractive,” Pyotr said.
    “Thanks,” Kate said. “Well, this is where I turn off. Do you realize the lab’s back that way?”
    “Oh! Is back that way!” Pyotr said. He didn’t seem too perturbed about it. “Okay, Kate! See you soon! Was nice having a talk.”
    Kate had already started down her own street, and she raised an arm without looking back.
    —
    She had barely stepped into the house when she heard a distinct male voice. “
Bunny
,” she called in her sternest tone.
    “In here!” Bunny sang out.
    Kate tossed her jacket onto the hall bench and went into the living room. Bunny was sitting on the couch, all frothy golden curls and oh-so-innocent face and off-the-shoulder blouse far too lightweight for the season; and the Mintz boy from next door was sitting next to her.
    This was a new development. Edward Mintz was several years older than Bunny, an unhealthy-looking young man with patchy beige chin whiskers that reminded Kate of lichen. He had graduated from high school two Junes ago but failed to leave for college; his mother claimed he had “that Japanese disease.” “What disease is that?” Kate had asked, and Mrs. Mintz said, “The one where young people shut themselves in their bedrooms and refuse to go on with their lives.” Except that Edward seemed bound not to his bedroom but to the glassed-in porch that faced the Battistas’ dining-room window, where day in and