Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

and I will drive. I remember 623 Daisy Lane, located in Harbor View. Four hours from here, Ray says, has always said, and I can do that. Go there.
    I will go there, tell them they have to leave. That they are not safe. I will see ... I will see them. I will makesure they are all right and that they go, and they will want ...
    They will not want me with them. I can't even get a blurry picture of that in my head, can't see them reaching toward me when I am covered with Ray, so full of him I'm empty. But they will go and I will ...
    I don't know. Hide, definitely. Burn down 623 Daisy Lane after they leave and wait for the police.
    Yes. Ray will not come for me if the police have me. If they have me, he won't be able to get me. I will be in jail. I will stay in until I am old, twenty-five, thirty, eat all I can and hope I swell up, push out into breasts and hips and belly like his mother's wide white girth.
    Then, if he comes, he will not want me. I will be safe.
    I am usually a husk, rattling through each day, but now I ... I feel. I feel smart. I feel ... I feel good. The sensation is strange, tiny stabs of something like pain but not, like ... like when Ray is tired from work and falls asleep on the sofa and I get to curl into myself for a whole evening.
    Those nights, legs arms chest feet thighs and everything over and around and under and between--all mine-- those nights almost shine. I feel dizzy at that, the thought of my skin not his but mine, and my body, my hollow shell, directed by my hands. Forever and ever, mine.
    My body coming together and taking me away.
    I do not care about Storm, even though today is the day she finds out if the doctor she destroyed can save her baby. Ray said I should go to the park and talk to Jake, ask about Annabel, get images to paint him a picture of her flushed skin, her tiny tired legs and arms tucked into bed, little girl needing care.
    "Make sure to find out when she'll be back," he said. "Make sure."
    I nodded, already knowing what the answer would be, she will be there tomorrow, oh yes, she will, and I get to the park extra early, before any children arrive. Sun on my face and I wiggle my toes back and forth in my shoes, eager.
    Yes I worry about what I will say to Jake, has to be words today, has to be, Ray will be watching, but words are just letters, right? A. L. I. C. E. Put them together, pull them apart, make new ones. I can do that, have to do that.
    Can do that for legs arms stomach back chest elbows knees of mine to be all mine.
    Lucy, now Annabel, comes in, little red backpack. She was going to toss it on the ground, but stops when she sees me.
    Look at her. Little girl, Ray will want her, and I will be alone, my skin my own. Thought washing over me again and again, joy.
    "You're crying," she says. Not a question, no wonderingwhy, and I touch my face. It is wet, the skin on my cheeks tightening as it dries. Like it will crack if I open my mouth.
    "You don't cry?" I ask her, and my skin stays in place. If she doesn't, Ray will take her and never look back, forget all about me. I didn't cry either. Not until I met him.
    She shrugs. "No. Jake says only babies cry and I'm not a baby even though he says I am."
    "Babies are little."
    She looks at me like I'm stupid. "Right. And I'm not. I can touch the sky when I swing. I can go that high."
    I nod. Touch fingers to my face, still wet, so glad it will be her, not me, that I'm overflowing.
    "You should stop crying," she says, her little face frowning, and then she pats my knee. Her hands are tiny. "You aren't a baby anymore."
    "No," I say, but my voice is a little girl cry, soft and weak. Ray has taught me only one way to speak. "I'm not."
    I watch her swing, this little girl who I will help Ray take, who will learn she is a baby, helpless as one and born into a place where she cannot grow, where she must stay as she is now even though her body will try to change.
    Ray will hurt her. Pain and tears soothed with ice cream and