Ernie's Ark by Monica Wood Read Free Book Online Page A

them arguing about whether or not Richard Nixon was a crook and should have resigned in disgrace.
    “I said get out. This is my house.”
    The girl pawed through the knapsack. She hauled out a pair of panties and slipped them on. Then a pair of frayed jeans, and a mildewy shirt that Marie could smell across the room. As she toweled her hair it became lighter, nearly white. She leveled Marie with a look as blank and stolid as a pillar.
    “I said get out,” Marie snapped, jangling her car keys.
    “I heard you.”
    “Then do it.”
    The girl dropped the towel on the floor, reached into the knapsack once more, extracted a comb, combed her flimsy, apparitional hair, and returned the comb. Then she pulled out a switchblade. It opened with a crisp, perfunctory snap.
    “Here’s the deal,” she said. “I get to be in charge, and you get to shut up.”
    Marie shot out of the cabin and sprinted into the door-yard, where a bolt of pain brought her up short and windless. The girl was too quick in any case, catching Marie by the wrist before she could reclaim her breath. “Don’t try anything,” the girl said, her voice low and cold. “I’m unpredictable.” She glanced around. “You expecting anybody?”
    “No,” Marie said, shocked into telling the truth.
    “Then it’s just us girls,” she said, smiling a weird, thin smile that impelled Marie to reach behind her, holding the car for support. The girl presented her water-wrinkled palm and Marie forked over the car keys.
    “Did you bring food?”
    “In the trunk.”
    The girl held up the knife. “Stay right there.”
    Marie watched, terrified, as the girl opened the trunk and tore into a box of groceries, shoving a tomato into her mouth as she reached for some bread. A bloody trail of tomato juice sluiced down her neck.
    Studying the girl—her quick, panicky movements—Marie felt her fear begin to settle into a morbid curiosity. This skinny girl seemed an unlikely killer; her tiny wrists looked breakable, and her stunning whiteness gave her the look of a child ghost. In a matter of seconds, a thin, reluctant vine of maternal compassion twined through Marie and burst into violent bloom.
    “When did you eat last?” Marie asked her.
    “None of your business,” the girl said, cramming her mouth full of bread.
    “How old are you?”
    The girl finished chewing, then answered: “Nineteen. What’s it to you?”
    “I have a son about your age.”
    “Thrilled to know it,” the girl said, handing a grocery sack to Marie. She herself hefted the box and followed Marie into the cabin, her bare feet making little animal sounds on the gravel. Once inside, she ripped into a box of Cheerios.
    “Do you want milk with that?” Marie asked her.
    The girl nodded. All at once her eyes welled up, and she wiped them with the heel of one hand, turning her head hard right, hard left, exposing her small, translucent ears. “This isn’t me,” she sniffled. She lifted the knife but did not give it over. “It’s not even mine.”
    “Whose is it?” Marie said steadily, pouring milk into a bowl.
    “My boyfriend’s.” The girl said nothing more for a few minutes, until the cereal was gone, another bowl poured, and that, too, devoured. She wandered over to the couch, a convertible covered with anchors that Ernie had bought to please James, who naturally never said a word about it.
    “Where is he, your boyfriend?” Marie asked finally.
    “Out getting supplies.” The girl looked up quickly, a snap of the eyes revealing something Marie thought she understood.
    “How long’s he been gone?”
    The girl waited. “Day and a half.”
    Marie nodded. “Maybe his car broke down.”
    “That’s what I wondered.” The girl flung a spindly arm in the general direction of the kitchen. “I’m sorry about the mess. My boyfriend’s hardly even paper-trained.”
    “Then maybe you should think about getting another boyfriend.”
    “I told him, no sleeping on the beds. We didn’t