Mud Girl by Alison Acheson Read Free Book Online Page B

with a rock, so it won’t slam on her, and then goes into the house.
    Abi can hear her holler. “William!”
    Who calls Dad William? He’s only ever been Bill or Will, or Billy. “William!” Rhodes shouts even louder. Dad must have written
William
on the form for Big Sisters.
    â€œTry resuscitation!” Abi yells, and the effort is hardly worth it. She begins to feel as if she’s going to throw up.
    â€œWhere are your aspirin?”
    He finally does speak up, but only to say, “Ask Abi.”
    â€œDo you have GINGER ALE ?” But now Rhodesy’s question seems not to be directed at anyone, and she’s opening the fridge as she speaks. She slams through a few cupboards, then her heeled steps are returning, faster and faster. “I’ll have to take you with me. We need to go to the drugstore.” She takes Abi’s hand, pulls her up. Amazing: the gentleness of Rhodes’s movement coupled with the heat in her voice.
    â€œLie down in the back seat. Don’t worry about the seat belt.”
    She’s in the drugstore for five minutes only, then she’s back, bags rustling, the big old ’70s car swaying with her bustle.
    She hands a bottle to Abi – full of ginger ale, fizzing and spitting up her nose – and drops pills into her hand.
    â€œTake two aspirin and go to bed,” Abi murmurs.
    â€œExactly,” Rhodes says briskly.
    You can tell she enjoys this, taking care of somebody. It’s a bit like a game to her – on the next go-round she’ll pick up her two hundred dollars, take a ride on the Reading Railroad…
    Back at the house, she tries to help Abi to the chesterfield.
    â€œNo, not that piece of crap,” Abi tells her, still keeping her head down. She sinks to the floor, back to the wall. “There’re springs coming out of the cushions. They coil right up your butt.” She feels pleased when Rhodes chuckles – a girlish jinglebell sound. A sound Abi would like to hear more often.
    â€œCan’t have
that
,” she says, and goes to get a cool cloth for Abi’s forehead, then another to drape over the nape of her neck. Makes her feel a little less like passing out.
    â€œWhat is this anyway?”
    â€œSunstroke,” she says.
    It feels good to have a name to attach to it.
    Rhodes opens one of the bags she’s brought with her. “Here’s cream,” she says, and she smooths the ointment over Abi’s arms and upper back. Rhodes’s fingers are light on her skin, and even that’s too much. “The other things in the bag are for you, too,” she says, an attempt to distract her, Abi suspects. She tries not to pull away from Rhodes’s touch.
    Other than Horace with his juice berries, Abi can’t remember when someone last bought something for her.
    Then she remembers how Mum took her shopping for clothes the week before she left.
Was she planning on leaving then? Is that why she insisted on two pairs of shoes – she only ever bought one at a time – and a trip to the lingerie department for two bras and enough underwear to fill a drawer?
Abi should have known then, right? Just thinking of that drawer of underwear makes her want to cry. Why has she never put this together before? Maybe it’s got something to do with Rhodes’s hands on her shoulders, gentle.
    Abi opens the bag and pulls out a plastic bottle. TEEN MULTI-VITAMINS . “Worried about my nutrition?” she asks. Who wouldn’t be; not a fresh anything in the fridge.
    Next a bottle of Midol.
    â€œI had terrible cramps when I was your age,” Rhodes says in a low voice. As if Dad would bother to listen.
    There’s a box of Tampax.
    â€œMy mother left me a lifetime supply.” It is, too. Takes up both shelves under the bathroom sink.
And what had I thought that meant? She was planning on having a period forever? Never shopping again? There was never