Feral by Holly Schindler Read Free Book Online Page B

silhouette, hoping it sounded like a punch.
    â€œHey,” her dad called, already halfway up the walk. “What are you doing just standing there? You’ll catch your death.”
    The phrase kicked Claire. “Coming.” She forced her feet to start moving up the ice-coated front walk, straight through the entrance, into a tiny sitting room with a fireplace and a wood floor and doilies on chairs and a couple of Norman Rockwell framed prints.
    â€œHow about the official tour?” Dr. Cain asked. They dragged their suitcases with them, going from one tiny room to the next, finding that each one featured a slightly different pattern of floral wallpaper. The out-of-date kitchen décor sported a linoleum-covered counter and a small sink with a dishpan, a round fridge from the fifties, and an old enamel stove.
    â€œWe can light that thing with a match when the power goes out,” her father said, pointing at the stove while the rain continued to patter against the drafty windows.
    â€œWait,” Claire said. “ When the power goes?”
    But Dr. Cain had already moved on to the note in the center of the table: Welcome! their temporary landlords had written. A casserole is in the fridge, a loaf of homemade bread on the counter. Make yourselves at home. —The Sims Family.
    The bathroom offered only an old-fashioned claw-foot tub with a free-standing porcelain sink and pink and aqua floor mats. Her father grunted at the tub. “No shower,” he grumbled.
    Together, they climbed the stairs, the threadbare green runner halfheartedly absorbing each blow from their shoes. “No second bathroom,” he sighed, after having stuck his head through every doorway.
    â€œWhich one of these do you think is the master?” Claire asked with a chuckle. Because the three bedrooms—each barely big enough to hold a desk and a twin bed—seemed exactly the same size.
    Her father laughed. “Beats me,” he confessed. “Which one do you want?”
    Claire pointed toward the closest room. “This is fine.” She stepped inside, gently placing her suitcase on the floor, next to a small dresser adorned with glass knobs, its top decorated with a vintage pink dresser scarf. The scarf wasn’t on straight, though—it was bunched up into a pile in the middle. Claire reached to straighten it. But her fingers had not yet even grazed the material when it came back to her in a chilling whoosh —the memory of the robe she’d worn her first night home from the hospital.
    It had been pink, too, and kind of silky, just like the old scarf. Her father had bought it for her because the weather was growing too warm for Claire’s old terry cloth robe. He’d wanted her to have something light and comfortable to wear. And pretty, too—the robe was pretty. Girls were always drawn to pretty things, after all.
    She’d waited for the din of her homecoming to finally subside—for Rachelle to go back to her own house and her father to go to sleep and the dark of night to cover the Welcome Home! signs in her bedroom. Claire had grabbed her walker and forced her broken body out of the bed and into the bathroom. Unable to lift both hands from the walker at the same time, she’d flicked the light on with her elbow. And she’d rolled her shoulders backward, letting the silky robe fall open.
    She’d cried, seeing herself in the mirror for the first time. Cried, and sworn angrily under her breath, because everyone had lied to her—it was bad, the way she looked. She would never be pretty again—not like she had been.
    When she’d finally run out of tears, she’d advised the puffy-faced girl in the mirror, “Cut some bangs. Wear your hair down. Move on.”
    She’d avoided mirrors after that. It hurt to look at the truth in a mirror—like staring directly into the sun.
    Claire snatched her fingers away from the dresser scarf without