Niagara Motel by Ashley Little Read Free Book Online Page A

mom’s name was Mary?”
    â€œYep.”
    We laughed. A kid rode by us on a shiny silver unicycle and Meredith whistled at him. I wished that I had a unicycle. If I had a unicycle, all of my problems would be solved.
    â€œI like Angel, though. It’s pretty. People would be nice to an Angel.”
    â€œYeah, they probably would,” I said.
    â€œAre people nice to your mom?”
    â€œI think so,” I said.
    â€œSo,” Meredith said. “You’re from nowhere and everywhere, eh?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œWhere was the last place you lived?”
    â€œPrince George.”
    â€œNever heard of it.” She blew smoke out the side of her mouth.
    â€œIt’s in northern British Columbia.”
    â€œBC’s cool.”
    â€œYeah. Prince George isn’t, though.”
    â€œWhere else have you lived?”
    â€œUm, Winnipeg, Regina, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Red Deer, Moose Jaw, Edmonton, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Thunder Bay, Sudbury… some other places. What about you?”
    â€œI’m from Toronto.”
    â€œCool.”
    Meredith took a hard drag off her cigarette.
    â€œHow come you came here?”
    â€œToo many people there. I didn’t like feeling crowded all the time.”
    â€œI don’t like crowds either,” I said.
    â€œPlus, the waterfalls are supposed to be good for you.”
    â€œGood how?”
    â€œApparently, if you’re around a lot of water, it gives off these negative ions, and it makes you feel better, it makes you feel happy.”
    â€œOh. So … are you?”
    â€œWhat, happy?”
    â€œYeah.”
    She took a puff, exhaled. “I don’t know. Is anyone?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess, sometimes, maybe.”
    Meredith tapped her cigarette. The wind ruffled the ends of her hair against her shoulders. She didn’t look sad to me, she looked … thoughtful. She looked like maybe she’d had more of life than otherkids her age, but she was wiser for it.
    â€œDo you like being sixteen?” I asked.
    Meredith exhaled a thin stream of smoke out toward the falls. She nodded slowly, her eyes glazed over as she stared into the green crush of water. “It’s okay.” She stood up and let her cigarette fall to the ground. “I have to get back to work,” she said. The cigarette rolled away and smoked itself from a crack in the sidewalk.
    â€œOkay.” I stood up.
    I felt dizzy, as if the mist-cloud trapped in the falls had landed on my head and gone inside my brain. Meredith began to walk. I dropped my cigarette on the sidewalk and wondered if the old man in the green rain hat would find it and put it into his soup can. I hurried to catch up with Meredith until she stopped to tie her shoelace. She had the same shoes as me, black and white Converse sneakers. But hers were high-tops and came up past her ankle. When we got close to the cigar shop she said, “See ya later, kid.” I knew that was my cue to leave although I didn’t want to. What I wanted to do was sit on that bench in front of the statue of Nikola Tesla and talk with Meredith all day. I wanted to ask her if she had ever felt happy. I wanted to ask her if her hair was really that black or if she got it out of a box of Nice ’n Easy. I wanted to ask her if she had poked all the holes in her pantyhose on purpose or if they just got that way over time. I wanted to ask her why she was at Bright Light and what her mom’s job was. I wanted to ask her to be my friend. But instead I said, “Okay,” shoved my hands in my pockets, and kept walking.

 
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    7
    After school, I went to see Gina. She was lying on her back staring up at the ceiling, her sky-blue eyes all glassy and blank. For a second, I thought she was dead. A sinkhole in the floor opened up beneath me and started to swallow everything that ever was. The chairs and all the machines and the IV stand got sucked down