What She Saw... Read Online Free PDF Page B

guilt she felt; it had more to do with fear-tinged fascination. “Okay, but not for very long,” she told him, amazed to find herself so effortlessly removed from everything she knew and trusted.
    Then she followed Stinky back out through the Recreation Center’s steel door and around the side of the building, through the parking lot, to the wooded entrance of Nutley Park.
    OVER THE YEARS, the Veterans’ Memorial statue had turned a putrid shade of green. But in the glow of the street lamps that night, it looked even more sickly. Stinky and Phoebe climbed up its base, and sat down on the narrow ledge that separated the dedication stone from the soldier. A hundred feet away the suburban traffic seemed to trickle by in slow motion. “Want one?” said Phoebe, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out a fresh box of candy cigarettes. She thought her choice of sweets would make her seem knowing. She thought a guy like Stinky would appreciate the symbolism of a candy cigarette.
    But he only laughed, reached into his own jacket pocket, pulled out a real box of Kool menthols, and offered one to Phoebe, who declined.
    It wasn’t just that Leonard would be horror-struck if he ever smelled cigarettes on her breath. (To a double-reed instrument player, tobacco was akin to suicide.) But she didn’t know how to smoke, and she certainly wasn’t going to try to figure it out in front of Stinky Mancuso. So she just sat there while he puffed away. She was thinking about how some of the kids in school were saying he might have to stay back a year if he didn’t start doing his homework. She was thinking she could help him do it, when he asked her, “Your mother still playing
Dildo and
Anus
?”
    â€œIs your mother still wearing army boots?” she asked him back.
    â€œMy mother’s wearin’ shit,” he said, downing the last sip of his Coke.
    â€œYour mother’s a nudist?” Phoebe thought she was being funny.
    But Stinky didn’t laugh. He didn’t answer either. He stood his empty Coke can on its end. Then he raised himself to his feet and proceeded to stomp the thing flat. He sent it flying in the direction of a nearby sandpit, and tossed his cigarette in the same direction. Then he lowered himself back onto the ledge and grumbled, “I’m gettin’ out of this shit hole, and soon.”
    Phoebe’s stomach lurched. She didn’t want Stinky to move away. “You’re moving?” she squeaked.
    â€œDepends whether I feel like it,” he shot back.
    â€œBut where would you go?”
    â€œAnywhere I like.”
    â€œWhat about your grandmother?”
    â€œWhat about her?”
    â€œWould she move too?”
    â€œShe’s not going anywhere.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œShe can’t even get out of bed—not unless I pull her.”
    That’s when he grabbed Phoebe by the jacket collar and brought her to his mouth. His lips tasted like cigarettes. Startled, she pulled away. “What’s the matter?” he said, elbowing her in the ribs. “You scared or something?”
    Phoebe pulled her jacket tight around her heart-motif T-SHIRT and stared into his eyes—eyes as big and black and insistent as the eyes of the raccoons that terrorized the Fines’ attic every spring. “Brenda’s going to be really mad if I don’t go back soon,” she told him.
    But Stinky didn’t seem all that worried about it. He reached down and untied one of her skate laces. “Now you can’t go anywhere,” he said. And for a second or two she believed him— believed she was a prisoner of Stinky Mancuso. And the thought of it left her speechless and flashing back to the day last year when her mother had abandoned her at pottery class. Okay, Roberta was only five minutes late to pick her up. But Phoebe was the last one there. Even the pottery teacher had gone home. “You like the