Fingerprints of You by Kristen-Paige Madonia Read Free Book Online Page A

doesn’t it?” she said to me a few weeks earlier in Walgreens.
    We were waiting for her birth control pills prescription, her in the makeup aisle, and me in the school-supplies aisle running my fingers over perfect five-subject notebooks and rolls of Scotch tape, boxes of paperclips, and scissors still shiny and sharp with newness.
    “Get over here, Lemon,” she said. I stood by her as she took the tester, swiped the lipstick over her mouth, and looked in the little square mirror stuck next to the sale rack. “It’s good, right?” she said, and I nodded and told her she was beautiful just like I knew she wanted. Sometimes it was easier that way. “Fire Engine Red,” she read from the bottom of the tube.
    The lipstick made her teeth look white. White like light-bulbs or the laces on new tennis shoes, white like the sugar she put in her coffee. “Your teeth look like snow,” I said, which I guess she liked the sound of because she reached over, pushed my hair away from my eyes, and rubbed her nose across mine, Eskimo style.
    “This is the month of Fire Engine Red,” she announced, and then she took three tubes off the shelf. Afterward we went to the art supply store and found a matching paint for her canvases.
    But with the sun slicing lines into the kitchen through the blinds that morning and my mom standing there in a cream-colored sweater and black miniskirt, with her hair pulled back off her face, Fire Engine Red was so bright and brilliant, it almost hurt to look at her. She squinted into the spoon again and wiped a smear from her teeth with her finger as I sat down at the table and opened my book to the dog-eared page I’d left off at the night before. I was working through a list of Tom Robbins novels and was anxious to find out what happened at the Rubber Rose Ranch to Sissy Hankshaw, the small-town heroine of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues . Stella dropped the mug in the sink, and on her way out of the room she stopped at the table where I sat and placed the hot Pop-Tart in front of me, its strawberry jam bleeding onto the paper towel. She bent to kiss me on the forehead, and she smelled a little like paint and a lot like hotel soap.
    I thought of telling her then. I almost grabbed her hand so I could explain it was my turn to go west. I had practiced it in my head enough times that it should have been easy to start with the I-know-you’re-not-going-to-like-the-sound-of-it-but-I-promise-it’s-going-to-be-okay part and to end with the I’m-almost-eighteen-and-you-were-my-age-when-you-left-for-San-Francisco part. I wanted it over with before I lost my nerve, but it was a holiday, a bad day for picking fights, so I let the moment pass.
    “I’m heading out to grab the bird and the fixings,” she said. “I expect you to be here to help when I get back,” and then, “I’m fully prepared to admit your apple pie kicks my apple pie’s ass, which makes you in charge of dessert.”
    For Thanksgiving, Stella, Simon, and I invited Emmy and her mom and her older sister, Margie, over to eat turkey anddrink wine and pretend we were thankful for all the things we had, when really I think we were all hoping to distract one another from the things we were missing. I was feeling pretty nauseous all the time by then, and Emmy’s family hadn’t heard from her dad in almost a month, but I guess the wine was pretty good because everyone seemed to get along okay, and everyone thought of something decent to say when we went around the table before dinner to name one thing we were glad about.
    “I’m thankful my boss finally taught me how to give highlights, so I can make more money now,” Margie said as she swept her bangs away from her face.
    “I’m thankful that I’m healthy,” Simon said. “And that we could all be together today. I’m thankful for the people I love,” he said, and he reached for Stella’s hand.
    I thought it was sweet, him looking at her like he believed in them, but Mom shifted her eyes