Кристин Ханна – Rirefly Lane / Улица Светлячков. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 3)
Something happened to her then. She wasn’t sure what it was, maybe the breasts that grew faster than anyone else’s, or maybe it was just that she got tired of putting her life down on pieces of paper no one ever asked to see. By fourteen, she was done. She put all her little-girl books in a big cardboard box and shoved them to the back of her closet, and she asked Gran not to buy her any more.
“Are you sure, honey?”
“Yeah,” had been her answer. She didn’t care about her mother anymore and tried never to think about her. In fact, at school, she told everyone that her mom had died in a boating accident[16].
The lie freed her. She quit buying her clothes in the little-girls departments and spent her time in the juniors area. She bought tight, midriff-baring shirts[17] that showed off her new boobs and low-rise bell-bottoms[18] that made her butt look good. She had to hide these clothes from Gran, but it was easy to do; a puffy down vest and a quick wave could get her out of the house in whatever she wanted to wear.
She learned that if she dressed carefully and acted a certain way, the cool kids wanted to hang out with her. On Friday and Saturday nights, she told Gran she was staying at a friend’s house and went roller-skating at Lake Hills, where no one ever asked about her family or looked at her as if she were “poor Tully.” She learned to smoke cigarettes without coughing and to chew gum to camouflage the smell on her breath.
By eighth grade, she was one of the most popular girl in junior high[19], and it helped, having all those friends. When she was busy enough, she didn’t think about the woman who didn’t want her.
On rare days she still felt… not quite lonely… but something. Adrift, maybe. As if all the people she hung around with were placeholders.
Today was one of those days. She sat in her regular seat on the school bus, hearing the buzz of gossip go on around her. Everyone seemed to be talking about family things; she had nothing to add to the conversations. She knew nothing about fighting with your little brother or being grounded for talking back to your parents or going to the mall with your mom. Thankfully, when the bus pulled up to her stop, she hurried off, making a big show of saying goodbye to her friends, laughing loudly and waving. Pretending; she did a lot of that lately.
After the bus drove away, she repositioned her backpack over her shoulder and started the long walk home. She had just turned the corner when she saw it.
There, parked across the street, in front of Gran’s house, was a beat-up red VW bus. The flower decals were still on the side.
Chapter three
It was still dark when Kate Mularkey’s alarm clock rang. She groaned and lay there, staring up at the peaked ceiling. The thought of going to school made her sick.
Eighth grade blew chips as far as she was concerned; 1974 had turned out to be a totally sucky year, a social desert. Thank God there was only a month left of school. Not that the summer promised to be any better.
In sixth grade she’d had two best friends; they’d done everything together – showed their horses in 4-H[20], gone to youth group, and ridden their bikes from one house to the next. The summer they turned twelve, all that ended. Her friends went wild; there was no other way to put it. They smoked pot before school and skipped classes and never missed a party. When she wouldn’t join in, they cut her loose. Period. And the “good” kids wouldn’t come near her because she’d been part of the stoners’ club. So now books were her only friends. She’d read
It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular.
With a sigh, she got out of bed. In the tiny upstairs closet that had recently been turned into a bathroom, she took a quick shower and braided her straight blond hair, then put on her spazo[21] horn-rimmed glasses. They were hopelessly out of date now – round and rimless were what the cool kids wore – but her dad said they couldn’t afford new glasses yet.
Downstairs, she went to the back door, folded her belled pant leg around each calf, and stepped into the huge black rubber boots they kept on the concrete steps. Moving like Neil Armstrong, she made her way through the deep mud to the shed out back. Their old quarterhorse mare[22] limped up to the fence, whinnied a greeting. “Heya, Sweetpea,” Kate said, throwing a flake of hay onto the ground, and then scratching the horse’s velvety ear.
“I miss you, too,” she said, and it was true. Two years ago they’d been inseparable; Kate had ridden this mare all that summer, and won plenty of ribbons at the Snohomish County Fair.
But things changed fast. She knew that now. A horse could get old overnight and go lame. A friend could become a stranger just as quickly.
“‘Bye.” She clomped back up the dark, muddy driveway and left her dirty boots on the porch.
When she opened the back door, she stepped into pandemonium. Mom stood at the stove, dressed in her faded floral housedress and fuzzy pink slippers, smoking an Eve menthol cigarette and pouring batter into an oblong electric frying pan. Her shoulder-length brown hair was divided into two scrawny pigtails; each one was held in place by a strand of hot-pink ribbon. “Set the table, Katie,” she said without glancing up. “Sean! Get down here.”
Kate did as she was told. Almost before she was finished, her mother was behind her, pouring milk into the glasses.
“Sean – breakfast,” Mom yelled up the stairs again. This time she added the magic words: “I’ve poured the milk.”
Within seconds eight-year-old Sean came running down the stairs and rushed toward the beige speckled Formica table, giggling as he tripped over the Labrador puppy who’d recently joined the family.
Kate was just about to sit down at her regular place when she happened to glance across the kitchen and into the living room. Through the large window above the sofa, she saw something that surprised her: A moving van was turning into the driveway across the street.
“Wow.” She carried her plate through the two rooms and stood at the window, staring out over their three acres and down on the house across the street. It had been vacant for as long as anyone could remember.
She heard her mother’s footsteps coming up behind her; hard on the fake brick linoleum of the kitchen floor, quiet in the moss-green carpeting of the living room.
“Someone’s moving in across the street,” Kate said.
“Really?”
“Maybe they’ll have a girl your age. It would be nice for you to have a friend.”
Kate bit back an irritated retort. Only mothers thought it was easy to make friends in junior high. “Whatever.” She turned away abruptly, taking her plate into the hallway, where she finished her breakfast in peace beneath the portrait of Jesus.
As expected, Mom followed her. She stood by the tapestry wall hanging of
“What?” Kate snapped when she couldn’t take it anymore.
Mom’s sigh was so quiet it could hardly be heard. “Why are we always bickering lately?”
“You’re the one who starts it.”
“By saying hello and asking how you’re doing? Yeah, I’m a real witch.”
“You said it, not me.”
“It’s not my fault, you know.”
“What isn’t?”
“That you don’t have any friends. If you’d—”
Kate walked away. Honest to St. Jude, one more if-you’d-only-try-harder speech and she might puke.
Thankfully – for once – Mom didn’t follow her. Instead, she went back into the kitchen, calling out, “Hurry up, Sean. The Mularkey school bus leaves in ten minutes.”
Her brother giggled. Kate rolled her eyes and went upstairs. It was so lame. How could her brother laugh at the same stupid joke every day?
The answer came as quickly as the question had: because he had friends. Life with friends made everything easier.
She hid in her bedroom until she heard the old Ford station wagon start up. The last thing she wanted was to get driven to school by her mom, who yelled goodbye and waved like a contestant on
She was gorgeous. Tall and big-boobed, she had long, curly auburn hair and a face like Caroline of Monaco[25]: pale skin and full lips and long lashes. And her