Ironside by Holly Black Read Free Book Online Page B

smoke burned Kaye’s eyes. “Have you ever thought about me not being your daughter? Like if I was switched at birth.” As the words came out of her mouth, her hand came up involuntarily, fingers curving as if she could snatch the words out of the air.
    “Wow. Weird question.”
    Kaye said nothing. She just waited. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to say anything else.
    “It’s funny. There was this one time.” Running her fingers through Corny’s hair, Ellen found stray pieces and cut them. “God, you were not even two, toddling around. I’d stacked up a bunch of books on a chair so you could sit at the table at your grandmother’s house. It wasn’t real safe, but I wasn’t real smart, either. Anyway, I go out to the kitchen, and when I come back, you’re on the floor and the pile of books is all over the place. I mean, clearly you fell and clearly I am a terrible mother. But you’re not crying. Instead, you have one of the books open and you’re reading out of it—clear as a bell. And I thought: My child is a genius. And then I thought: This is not my child.”
    “Huh,” Kaye said.
    “And you were so honest—nothing like me as a kid. You’d bend the truth, sure, but you’d never outright lie.”
    My life is a lie. It was such a relief not to say it. It was a relief to just let the moments slide by until the subject got changed and the awful galloping of her heart slowed again.
    “So did you ever imagine what things would be like if you were secretly adopted?” Ellen asked.
    Kaye froze.
    Ellen mixed the black dye in a chipped cereal bowl with a round metal spoon.
    “When I was a kid, I used to pretend that I was a gypsy baby and the gypsies would come back for me and I’d have my own caravan and I’d tell people their fortunes.”
    “If you weren’t my mother, who would give my friends fabulous makeovers?” As she said the words, Kaye knew she was a coward. No, not a coward. She was greedy. She was that cuckoo chick unwilling to give up the comforts of a stolen nest.
    It was amazing how deceptive she could be without lying outright.
    Corny reached up to touch the sudden spiky shortness of his hair. “I used to pretend that I was from another dimension. You know, like the mirror-universe Spock with the goatee. I figured, in that other dimension my mom was really the monarch of a vast empire or a wizard in exile or something. The downside was that she probably had a goatee.”
    Kaye snickered. The cigarette smoke combined with the chemical stink of the hair dye turned her laughter to choking.
    Ellen spooned a glop of black goop onto Corny’s head and smeared it with a comb. Flecks stained the back of her hand, and her bracelets jangled together.
    Dizzily, Kaye crossed the tiny room and pushed open the window. She could hear the paint crack as it came unstuck. Gulping in lungfuls of cold air, she looked out at the street. Her eyes stung.
    “It’s just going to be another minute,” Ellen said. “Then I’ll plastic-wrap his head and toss this shit out.”
    Kaye nodded, although she wasn’t sure her mother was looking. Out on the street, small clusters of people stood together in the snowy landscape, their breath spiraling up like smoke.
    The streetlight reflected off strands of long pale hair and for a moment, before one of the figures turned, she thought of Roiben. It wasn’t him, of course, but she had to stop herself from calling down anyway.
    “Honey, I’m done here,” Ellen said. “Look around and see if you can find this boy another shirt. I ruined his, and anyway, he’s too skinny to be drowning in that thing.”
    Kaye turned. Corny’s neck was red and splotchy. “Mom, you’re embarrassing him!”
    “If this was a television show, I would be the one doing the makeovers,” Corny said darkly.
    Ellen put out her cigarette on a plate. “God help us.”
    Kaye rummaged around in the stacks of clothing until she came up with a dark brown T-shirt with the black silhouette