When the Saints Read Online Free PDF

marchellos to anyone who came to the house, asking if they knew how she might get her hands on some.
    I’m trying to remember more stuff about her when West rolls over, sits up and rubs his head. He’s done the same thing in the same order every morning since I got here: rolls over, sits up, rubs his head.
    “Time is it?” he grunts, guiding my hand to his erection.
    “Around nine. Hey, did you know my sister, Poppy?”
    “Seen her a few times, but no.”
    “She pretty?”
    “Yeah.” He lies back down. “Nice long legs.”
    “Good for her. I guess Kool-Aid and Cheezies don’t stunt your growth after all. Was she still living at home with Ma and Daddy when the shit hit the fan?”
    “How come you don’t know any of this? You never even phoned them?”
    “They never owned a phone.”
    “So you just left to go live with some other family and that was it?”
    My eyes travel to the ceiling. “I’d been arrested a few times. Not for anything serious, just for stupid stuff like stealing underarm deodorant and busting windows. The cops threatened Ma, said she had to pay a fine for something I did, which was bullshit because I had the right to work it off in community service. But she was a jumble of nerves about it. And she was convinced I’d have a better life if I got far from here. She got this infection in her ears, and while she was in the hospital she met some woman who was bringing her elderly parents back home to live with her in New Brunswick. She confessed to Ma that she didn’t know how she was going to get by without some help, so Ma talked me up as some Mother Teresa bed-sitter. Next thing I know, I’m in the back seat of a car headed who knows where.”
    “What was the woman like?”
    “She was adorable. She matched her dress to her earrings, God love her, but I wasn’t Mother Teresa. She took one look at me and knew she couldn’t leave me alone with her goldfish let alone her parents, so I ended up just being bored and in the way. I stole from her, lied to her, lied about lying. I gave a hand job to her plumber for a ride into the city, came back about a week later high as a shelf, tried to sell her parents some pills. I scared the shit out of all her neighbours. I don’t know why she didn’t kick me out sooner. I think she felt sorry for my mother. She took meon like some kind of pet project, even tricked me into her church one Sunday.”
    West fights a smile. “What did she tell you was in there?”
    “Her name was Barbara Best. She used to correct the way I talked. If I said I seen her mailman coming, she’d say, You
saw
him. I’d say, What difference does it matter? And she’d say, You mean,
what is
the difference, and
why does
it matter?”
    “Worked, though,” West says. “You got good grammar.”
    “One time, we were in town buying milk and she caught me checking out a guitar in a store window. She asked me if I was interested in learning how to play. I told her what my mother always said, that Saints aren’t musical people, but Barbara Best said that isn’t true, that all people are born musical from the moment they break out of the womb and open up their lungs. She told me, ‘Music is everywhere, Tabatha.’” I pause, remembering her face. “I still say that in my head sometimes: Music is everywhere.”
    “Music is everywhere,” West murmurs.
    “So we struck a deal that I could have that big red guitar for my birthday if I’d behave until then. My birthday’s in June and that was January. I lasted two months until I stole this stupid paperweight shaped like the Eiffel Tower off a teacher’s desk and sold it to a student in another class. I didn’t think that would count, but it did.” I reach my foot up to push back the curtains and sunlight spills into the room. We lie there squinting. “I wish I’d held out. Nobody’s ever given me a birthday present my whole life.”
    “Really? Not even your own mother?”
    “She’d bake a cake.”
    “That’s not the