LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

your mom,” Judy says.

      “Huh?” I stop biting a star shape in my cookie.

      “My mom says your mom is beautiful and artistic . . . oh, and happily married.”

      Judy talks like her mom isn’t standing right there, blushing.

      I smile at Mrs. Marks, nervously. She’s small and skinny with a pointed chin. Mom says she has an “interesting face” which means she’d like to paint her someday. Judy says her mother looks like the Wicked Witch of the West.

      “No treat, Judy?” Mrs. Marks asks, still holding out the tray. “Have some milk.”

      “I’ll take water, Connie.” When did Judy start calling her mom by her first name?

      “I like it better when you call me Mom.”

      “Okay, Connie, but no cookies for me. I don’t want to gain weight before my trip to San Diego.”

      Mrs. Marks turns and walks out. When the dishes rattle on the tray, I realize she’s shaking, a small nervous tremble like the vibrato Aunt Jamie showed me on her violin.

      “Why are you acting so . . .” I start to say, then change my mind when she steps up on her bed, stretching on tiptoes to reach the high church window. Judy calls it “the jail window.” Only her fingertips touch it but she keeps stretching.

      “Milk and cookies are fattening, Lily. And water’s important,” Judy sniffs. Is she crying? “People are 85 percent water. The earth is 76 percent water.” Judy’s smart. She always gets As in science.

      “If there’s so much water inside us, why do people die of thirst?” I ask.

      She ignores my question, plops down on her bed, and opens the latest issue of Tiger Beat to its centerfold of teen idol Bobby Sherman.

      “Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re full of water but we still need more?”

      “Lots of stuff is weird,” Judy says.

      I know that. But, “Why aren’t people born with enough water inside them?”

      “How the hell would I know? You talk a lot, Lily.”

      “No I don’t.” I look at my toenails. “Just to you.” I don’t like the color. “What color is this, Pukey Pink?”

      Judy sniffs. “Yeah, I puked in it. I put snot and scabs and pus in it too. And blood—that’s where the color comes from. I thought you’d like it.”

      “I do. Thanks.” Usually when we gross each other out it’s funny, but we’re not joking this time.

      “You talk about God a lot too.”

      “No I don’t.”

      “Yes you do. You believe in Him, right?”

      “A little. Sometimes.” God is okay, it’s Jesus I have problems with. He’s a selfish ratfink who doesn’t save drowning dogs or children. I pull Judy’s sewing basket into my lap and begin arranging and rearranging the threads, first by color and then alphabetically. Judy doesn’t mind; she never uses them.

      “Do you think if something was wrong,” her voice is softer now, “you know, bad or evil or something, that Jesus would help me even if I don’t believe in Him?”

      “I guess. Maybe.”

      “Because I saw His shadow on my bedroom wall.”

      “Huh?”

      “Jesus was outside my window last night.”

      My heart beats faster. “Maybe it was your stepdad,” I say. Judy turns red. Did I say something wrong? “Or Rusty, or Sherman.”

      “No,” Judy says impatiently. “It was Jesus. Alan saw him the other day too.” Alan is Judy’s boyfriend; they’re going steady but he hasn’t kissed her yet. Next weekend, after Judy gets back from San Diego, is their first official date; Alan’s father is driving them. “Alan saw Him in Bible study, just for a second, standing at the blackboard.”

      There’s an illustration of Jesus “standing at the blackboard” in the kitchen at Gramma Frieda’s church too. I saw it when I helped cut pie one Sunday.

      “Maybe it was a picture,” I say.

      “No, he swore it was true. Do you think, you know, that maybe Jesus came to my house because He wants to help me?” Judy asks. “You said He might help if things were bad.”

      “No I didn’t. I don’t know if He’d help you; I’m not Jesus’s secretary.” I can’t concentrate on organizing the threads, so I put aside the sewing basket.

      “But you go to church, Lily, and you wear a crucifix, and . . .”

      Why was Jesus at Judy’s house? I’m the one who almost drowned. I’m the one who killed my dog. I’m the one who saw Him in the woods, in the jeep, at the bottom of Peace Lake.

      Judy crosses her arms on her chest. “Stop looking at me funny!”

      “I’m not!”

      “You are too. I’m not lying about seeing Him, you know.”

      Which means she probably is. “I know,” I say. I flip through her new Seventeen pretending to be interested, then close it.

      Jesus was looking for me, and got Judy’s house by mistake. All the houses in our neighborhood look alike, it’s easy to get confused. My hands are sweaty. “How’d you know it was Him if all you saw was His shadow?”

      “You’d know it was Him if you saw Him,” Judy answers, snapping her gum. “He wore one of those boy dresses like in the Bible, and He had a beard and long hair.”

      “How long?”

      “Longer than Prince Valiant’s.” I smile despite myself. It’s a secret that Judy and I both like Prince Valiant; everyone else thinks he looks like a girl, or one of those sissy Dutch guys on cigar boxes. “He didn’t have a crown of thorns though.”

      Good, I hate that.

      My sweaty fists stick to the glossy magazine cover. When I lift them off the paper they make little prints of baby feet, without toes, that quickly evaporate. “Were you scared?”

      Judy shrugs, then burps long and loud from deep in her throat like boys do. I wish I could do that.

      She’s three years older than I am—old enough to take a week off from school and go to San Diego with her stepdad. Mr. Marks is the West Coast sales rep for Kenmore. Every time a new furniture or appliance store opens between Seattle and Los Angeles, they send him out. Judy and Mr. Marks leave tomorrow, before school starts, for the biggest appliance convention of the year. But Judy isn’t excited about getting out of school for five days, or buying new clothes; she doesn’t want to go to San Diego, or “anywhere else with my stupid stepfather.” Judy told me she wished he’d never married her mom.

      I don’t like Mr. Marks ever since he asked me to check his heart with the stethoscope I got for Christmas, then stuck his tongue in my mouth. “I didn’t know doctors tasted so good,” he said. Gross. When I told Judy about it, she got mad at me as if I’d done something wrong.

      Mom must like Mr. Marks though, because when Dad said she flirted with him at the New Year’s Eve party, she turned red. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but people gossip,” he reminded her, “and his first marriage ended in a big ruckus. His own daughter—”

      “You know how families are,” Mom cut him off. “And Paul? It was my third martini. We were all pie-eyed, don’t you remember?”

      * * *

      Mrs. Marks made Judy put her hair up so she’d “look nice at the convention’s big dinner” tomorrow night. I stare at the four soup-can rollers down her part

Скачать книгу