Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online Page A

When we came out from behind the car, Buddy and Charlie were already standing up to their ankles in the water, the sun reflecting from their white backs.
    The beach was dusty and hot, with trash from picnickers left here and there about it: paper plates showing half-moons above the sand, dented paper cups, bottles. Part of a hot-dog weiner floated near where we waded in, pallid, greyish-pink, lost-looking. The lake was shallow and weedy, the water the temperature of cooling soup. The bottom was of sand so fine-grained it was almost mud; I expected leeches in it, and clams, which would probably be dead, because of the warmth. I swam out into it anyway. Trish was screaming because she had walked into some water weeds; then she was splashing Charlie. I felt that I ought to be doing these things too, and that Buddy would note the omission. But instead I floated on my back in the lukewarm water, squinting up at the cloudless sky, which was depthless and hot blue and had things like microbes drifting across it, which I knew were the rods and cones in my eyeballs. I had skipped ahead in the health book; I even knew what a zygote was. In a while Buddy swam out to join me and spurted water at me out of his mouth, grinning.
    After that we swam back to the beach and lay down on Trish’s over-sized pink beach towel, which had a picture of a mermaid tossing a bubble on it. I felt sticky, as if the water had left a film on me. Trish and Charlie were nowhere to be seen; at last I spotted them, walking hand in hand near the water at the far end of the beach. Buddy wanted me to rub some suntan lotion onto him. He wasn’t tanned at all, except for his face and his hands and forearms, and I remembered that he worked all week and didn’t have time to lie around in the sun the way I did. The skin of his back was soft and slightly loose over the muscles, like a sweater or a puppy’s neck.
    When I lay back down beside him, Buddy took hold of my hand, even though it was greasy with the suntan lotion. “How about Charlie, eh?” he said, shaking his head in mock disapproval, as if Charlie had been naughty or stupid. He didn’t say Charlie and Trish. He put his arm over me and started to kiss me, right on the beach, in the full sunlight, in front of everyone. I pulled back.
    “There’s people watching,” I said.
    “Want me to put the towel over your head?” he said.
    I sat up, brushing sand off me and tugging up the front of my bathing suit. I brushed some sand off Buddy too: his stuck worse because of the lotion. My back felt parched and I was dizzy from the heat and brightness. Later, I knew, I would get a headache.
    “Where’s the lunch?” I said.
    “Who’s hungry?” he said. “Not for food, anyways.” But he didn’t seem annoyed. Maybe this was the way I was supposed to behave.
    I walked to the car and got out the lunch, which was in a brown paper bag, and we sat on Trish’s towel and ate egg-salad sandwiches and drank warm fizzy Coke, in silence. When we had finished, I said I wanted to go and sit under a tree. Buddy came with me, bringing the towel. He shook it before we sat down.
    “You don’t want ants in your pants,” he said. He lit a cigarette and smoked half of it, leaning against the tree trunk – an elm, I noticed – and looking at me in an odd way, as if he was making up his mind about something. Then he said, “I want you to have something.” His voice was offhand, affable, the way it usually was; his eyes weren’t. On the whole he looked frightened. He undid the silver bracelet from his wrist. It had always been there, and I knew what was written on it: Buddy , engraved in flowing script. It was an imitation army I.D. tag; a lot of the boys wore them.
    “My identity bracelet,” he said.
    “Oh,” I said as he slid it over my hand, which now, I could tell, smelled of onions. I ran my fingers over Buddy’s silver name as if admiring it. I had no thought of refusing it; that would have been impossible,