In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page B

found anything cosmetic except for a single half-used lipstick. There was makeup remover—a tub of
     
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Pond's cold cream—but no makeup. What did Rose think? That somebody was going to sneak into her apartment in the dead of night, tie her up, put makeup on her face, and then leave? Plus, there wasn't so much as a single condom or tube of spermicide, although there was an unopened package of Monistat—so just in case her celibate sister somehow managed to get a yeast infection from a toilet seat or something, she'd be ready. It was probably on sale, Maggie snorted, helping herself to a bottle of Midol. The bathroom was also minus a scale. Which wasn't a surprise, given Rose's history with bathroom scales. When they were teenagers, Sydelle had taped a laminated chart on the girls' bathroom wall. Each Saturday morning, Rose would stand on the scale, her eyes shut and her face impassive, as Sydelle recorded the number and then sat on the toilet seat, quizzing Rose about what she'd eaten during the week. Even now, Maggie could hear her stepmother's too-sweet voice. You had a salad? Well, what kind of dressing was on it? Was it fat free? Are you sure? Rose, I'm only doing this to help you. I've got your best interests at heart. Yeah, right, Maggie thought. As if Sydelle was ever interested in anyone but herself, and her own daughter. In the bedroom, Maggie pulled on a pair of her sister's sweatpants and continued her inventory, gathering what she called Information. "You're a very smart girl," her old teacher Mrs. Fried used to tell her, back in elementary school. Mrs. Fried, with her gray curls and impressive shelf of a bosom, with her beaded eyeglass chain and knitted sweater vests, had taught Maggie what was euphemistically called "enrichment" (and what was known to the students as "special ed") from second grade through sixth. She was a kind, grandmotherly woman who'd become Maggie's ally, especially during her first months in a new school, in a new state. "Part of what makes you so smart is that you can always think of another way to get the job done. So if you don't know what a word means, what do you do?" "Guess?" guessed Maggie. Mrs. Fried smiled. "Figure it out through context, is how I'd
     
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put it. It's all about finding solutions. Solutions that work for you." Maggie had nodded, feeling pleased and flattered, which were not normally ways she felt during class. "So imagine you are on your way to the Vet, for a concert, but there's a big traffic jam. Would you go home? Skip the concert? No," Mrs. Fried had said, before Maggie'd had a chance to ask her who was playing at this theoretical concert so she could figure out how much effort it was worth. "You'd just find another way to get there. And you're smart enough to do it really well." In addition to figuring out a word's meaning from context, Mrs. Fried's alternative strategies taught Maggie to add numbers if she couldn't multiply them, to chart out a paragraph's meaning, circling the subject, underlining the verbs. In the years since school, Maggie had come up with a few new strategies of her own, like Information, which could be defined as knowing things about people that they didn't want or expect you to know. Information was always useful, and it was usually easy to come by. Through the years Maggie secretly perused credit-card bills and diaries, bank statements and old photographs. In high school, she'd located a battered copy of Forever between Rose's mattress and box spring. Rose had turned over her allowance for almost an entire school year before deciding that she didn't care if Maggie told her father how she'd dog-eared the pages with sex scenes. Maggie snooped over to her sister's desk. There were gas bill, electric bill, phone bill, and cable bill, all neatly paper-clipped together, the return envelopes already bearing stamps and address labels. Here was a receipt from Tower Records, which told her that Rose had