Wintergirls Read Online Free PDF Page A

shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses.
    The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.
    When Dad comes home, the microwave heats his supper. More wine is poured. Jennifer tells Emma that it’s past her bedtime. I turn page after quiet page, but I’ve stopped seeing the letters, stopped understanding the words.
    His footsteps on the stairs.
    I arrange my face in the middle of the book, my hair spread like seaweed floating in the current of the story that sweeps me under and away to sleep. I drape a loose hand over the edge of the bed.
    No, better not. I pull the hand back in.
    His footsteps in the hall. Door opens.
    “Lia?”
    Lia is not available. Please leave a message when you hear the beep.
    she called me thirty-three times.

    “Lia? Are you awake?”
    Jennifer uses the cranky-Mommy voice to tell Emma
    “for the last time get up those stairs.” Emma’s answer is too quiet to be heard.
    Dad sits on the edge of my bed. He brushes the hair off my face, leans forward, and kisses my forehead. He smells like leftovers and wine.
    “Lia?”
    Go away. Lia needs to sleep for one hundred years in a locked glass box. The people who know where the key is hidden will die and she’ll finally get some rest.
    He lifts my head and slides the book out from under it. I open one eye a slit and watch through the spiky lashes. He marks my place by bending a corner of the page, then reads the stuff on the back. Above his collar, the skin jumps, the blood rushing to feed his giant brain.
    My father is a history professor, the Great and Power-ful Expert about the American Revolution. He’s won a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, and a job consulting on a cable news show. The White House invites him for dinner so often that he owns a tuxedo. He has played squash with two vice presidents and a secretary of defense. He knows how we became who we are today and where we should go from here. My teachers tell me I should feel lucky to have a father like this. Maybe if I didn’t hate history, I would.
    “Lia? I know you’re awake. We need to talk.”

    I stop breathing.
    “I’m sorry about Cassie, honey.”
    The glass around me crackles. Cassie called me before she died. She called and called and called and waited for me to pick up.
    1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 . 1 0 . 1 1 . 1 2 . 1 3 . 1 4 . 1 5 . 1 6 . 1 7 . 1 8 . 1 9 .
    2 0 . 2 1 . 2 2 . 2 3 . 2 4 . 2 5 . 2 6 . 2 7 . 2 8 . 2 9 . 3 0 . 3 1 . 3 2 . 3 3 .
    My father smoothes my hair again. “Thank God you’re safe.”
    Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn’t hear the impact, can’t smell the blood.
    He takes a deep breath and pats my shoulder hidden under the comforter. “We’ll talk later,” he lies.
    We never talk. We just pretend to think about talking, and we mention from time to time that one of these days, we really should sit down and talk. It’ll never happen.
    The bed creaks as he stands. He turns off the light on the nightstand and crosses the room in the dim glow of the plastic galaxy glued overhead. The snick of the tongue of the catch finding its place in the door frame releases me.
    I roll to face the wall. Shards of glass race for my heart because Cassie is dead and cold. She died in the Gateway Motel and it is my fault. Not the magazines or the Web sites, or the knife-tongue girls in the locker room, or the neck-sucking boys on the back porch. Not her coaches or directors or counselors or the inventors of size 0 and 00.
    Not even her mother or her father.
    i didn’t answer.
    . . .When I was a real girl, my best friend was named Cassandra Jane Parrish. She moved in the winter of third grade. I sat with my chin on the windowsill and stared across the street as they unloaded the moving van. A