Full of Grace by Misty Provencher Read Free Book Online Page B

mouth.  She writhes beneath me, but I don’t let go. I keep on sucking, until the anger has drained out of me too.  When I raise my head, there’s an enormous, angry hickey on her neck.  I haven’t done that since junior high, but there it is.
    “What the hell?” she screeches, as I let her up.  She clutches her neck and runs into my bathroom.  Without closing the door, she flips on the light and screams again.  I sit back on the couch as she stalks out of the bathroom, shrieking,  “You fucking fifth grader!  Why the hell did you do that?”
    “You spit in my face!”
    “My mom’s never going to let me back in the house now!  I can’t even go out like this!”
    I smile at her.
    “Good,” I say.  “Then you’ll stay here.  You’re all mine for now.”
    “I’m not YOURS!” she shouts.
    “That hickey on your neck says otherwise,” I laugh.  She picks up my TV remote and fires it at my head.
     
    ***
     
    Sher holes herself up in my bedroom and when I open the door to ask if she wants something to eat, she throws one of my own shoes at me.  I leave her alone, figuring she’ll come around, until late in the afternoon.  She’s been quiet for a few hours and I assume she’s exhausted herself into a nap.  I rap lightly on the door, but when she doesn’t answer, I wedge the door open an inch and call her name.
    “Sher?  You awake?”  No answer.  I open the door a hair more.  “Sher?”
    A cool breeze hits me.  She must’ve opened the window to puke again.
    “Sher?”  Still no answer.  I open the door all the way, bracing to be hit with whichever belonging of mine that she decides to use as ammo.
    Sher’s not lying in my bed.  And she’s not puking out the window.  But, my bed’s been stripped of all the sheets and covers, and one is tied in a thick knot around the corner of my bed frame.  I follow the knots of my bedding to the window and right over the ledge.
    The end of my bed sheet is swaying in the slight breeze, near the ground.  Sher’s nowhere in sight.  I haul in the sheets, so my neighbors don’t freak out, and I grab my car keys.  Once I’m in my car, I dial Oscar, to ask his new wife if she’s got a little pregnant stowaway at her house.
    “She’s not here,” Hale tells me.  “She probably went home.  Her mom’s got to let her back in, Sher’s her only babysitter.  It’s Apartment 22B.  But listen to me, Landon...”
    “Yeah?”
    “Sher’s my best friend.  Best. Friend.”
    I chuckle.  “You coming after me if this doesn’t work out, Hale?”
    “Oh no,” Hale laughs on the other end.  “I couldn’t do a thing to you. But I’ll send Oscar.”
    Then, after she gives me directions to Sher’s mother’s apartment, OC jumps back on the other end to say, “You know I love you, buddy, so don’t screw up.  You know I’d have to break your legs if my wife asked me to do it.”
    “Yeah, I know,” I chuckle.  “I’ll do my best to drag Sher back over to my place.”
    Oscar’s voice drops an octave.  He’s either going to say something that he doesn’t want Hale to hear, or he’s trying to let me know something’s important.  Or both.
    “Patience, Land,” he says.  “That’s all it takes.  I know from experience.  It just takes a whole lot of patience.”
     
    ***
     
    Sher’s apartment complex is seedy. It’s the second week of October and warm enough that I’ve got the air conditioner going in my car, but there’s a guy tucked into a black hoodie that shrouds his face, at the entrance. I have to pull into the parking lot, which is surrounded by the u-shaped building.  There’s a scattering of old ladies sitting on plastic chairs outside their doors and three teenagers, all dressed in black with a bunch of facial tackle, mulling around a door at the far corner on the top floor.  It looks like the perfect place to get jumped.
    There are two levels and Hale said Sher’s apartment is 22B, which, I assume, has to be on