Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page A

people have them for lunch too. In fact, if you take enough of these every day, you don’t have to eat food at all.”
    Larque recognized the fervor in those round brown eyes. Her mother had now joined a vitamin cult, to purify the soul by purifying the body of its atavistic craving for bacon and eggs. That, and other primitive urges. Some people got so they didn’t even want to crap.
    â€œMother, don’t do that,” she protested. “You stop going to the bathroom, you’re dead.”
    â€œDon’t worry, dear. The very nice man on the phone explained everything to me. It’s completely safe, recommended by the Holistic Church of Inner Unity, and very, very healthy. I receive weekly shipments.…”
    It occurred to Larque that she was now mothering her mother. She hated this, because when was anybody ever going to mother her? As an act of covert rebellion she stopped listening. Florrie was explaining the Nutri-Salvation plan at some length, and while she gazed heavenward, fervid about transcendent health, Larque took the sawdust tablet and slipped it into her paper napkin, which she then stuffed into her jeans pocket.
    Crawling out from behind the love seat at that moment, Sky saw her. “Coward,” the little girl crooned.
    â€œShut up,” Larque told her.
    Holding forth, Florrie blinked several times rapidly and focused on Larque, but kept talking. Sky did not shut up either.
    â€œYou’re a coward and you always were. You always snuck about things. Brown nose. Goody-two-shoes.”
    â€œGo wash your face, for God’s sake,” Larque told her. “You’ve got snot down to your chin.”
    â€œDo not.”
    â€œDear?” Florrie had stopped talking and was staring at Larque while maintaining an expression of benign inquiry on her softly wrinkled face. “Did you hear what I was saying?”
    â€œYes, Mom.”
    â€œThere, you’re doing it again,” Sky accused. “Liar. You lie like a rug.”
    â€œI’m courteous, that’s all. I’m just being polite.”
    Her mother said in hurt tones, “Well, I thought you’d be interested.”
    â€œNo! Mom, I was talking to Sky.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œI wasn’t—I didn’t mean—of course I’m interested in what you were saying.”
    â€œTell her the truth for once,” Sky challenged. “You’re the reason she can’t see me.”
    â€œOh, she can so see you!” Larque burst out. “Why did you come here if she can’t see you?”
    â€œYou tell me.”
    â€œMom, you see her, don’t you?” In the backwash of the small tiff this suddenly seemed absurdly important to Larque, though obviously her mother did not see her spirit self of the past at all. “I mean, you will if you really look,” she amplified. “Right there, by the gas heater.”
    Florrie blinked at the indicated area of the room. Sky stood still. For a moment Larque wondered why Sky was cooperating, as the child seemed so difficult in general, but then she saw the look of dry-eyed longing on the little girl’s face. This was important to her too.
    â€œStanding right in front of you,” Larque said impatiently to her mother, but then she deliberately softened her voice. “It’s me when I was about ten,” she said. “Skinny. In oxford shoes and bobby sox, and one of those full cotton skirts that came down to my shins, and a plain white blouse.”
    Florrie peered. Florrie smiled like sunshine. “Oh, of course, Skylark,” she said gently. “I see you now.”
    But the child who stood there now was not snot-nosed. Not sullen or needful. Not scabby of knee, or bony of overlarge ankle, not ragged of fingernail, not a nose-picking crotch-snatcher, not uncouth or ungainly in any way. The Sky who now stood there, daughter of Florence Lawrence, was a delicate little fairylike