Songs Without Words by Ann Packer Read Free Book Online

appointment. Liz was watching him, and he stretched his arms out in front of him, pulled the paper closer for a glimpse of the headlines. He said, “Hey, maybe I’ll sand that bench today.”
    It had been weeks that he’d been promising, and a smile lit her face. “Really?”
    “Yeah. It’s Saturday, and I’m a man with a power tool. What could be better?”

    Upstairs, Lauren heard Joe’s shower go on, and she looked at her clock: 10:17. She’d been awake since eight something, but she was still in bed, or actually in bed again, having gotten up to discover that the only clean jeans she had were a pair she hated. They made her ass look fat, which meant an ugly day. Back under the covers, she’d pulled her nightgown over her nose and sniffed, and though she couldn’t smell anything she was sure she stank, because her pits were slick with sweat. It was such a joke that Jeff Shannon would ever look twice at her. He might look twice to bark. She hated how easily she cried—she was doing it again. Tears all over her face. Snot streaming from her nose. She cried without even crying. These days she did. Just quietly, all this stuff sliding out of her.
    She sat up and then had to wait for the dizziness to stop before she could stand. Her room had the awful darkness of closed curtains in daytime. She went over and pulled one curtain to the side. It was sunny out, the sky so clear and blue it hurt her eyes. She’d prefer rain or at least clouds. She thought of how her dad used to take her and Joe bike riding: on Saturdays like this, if he didn’t have to work, they’d go on these megarides by the reservoir. When Joe was moving along OK, Lauren and her dad would race to the moon. That was what he said: “Let’s race to the moon.” He always let her win. She knew but didn’t know. He’d be panting, he’d be all, “I almost had you.” Pretending to wipe sweat from his forehead. And she believed him. It wasn’t even like she had to choose to believe him; it just happened. So how did she know now that he’d been faking?
    She hardly saw her dad these days. Well, that wasn’t really true, she saw him all the time, and for some reason this made her feel worse. Now her shoulders shook a little. Now she was really crying. She got up onto her desk and stared out the window. From the second floor it would be so easy to fall. She meant jump but pretend she’d fallen. She hated these thoughts. She hadn’t been thinking about anything before, but now she was thinking horrible stuff. She was crying and crying. She realized that she was pounding her fists against her thighs. If only there were somewhere to go, she needed somewhere to go. She slid off the desk and crumpled to her knees, then lowered her head to the rug. She was crying and crying, as quietly as she could but so hard she felt sick. Her parents were downstairs, Joe was in the bathroom. She couldn’t go anywhere.
    The picture came to her then, the picture of herself under a heavy blanket, this stiff, hairy blanket like something from the army. It stretched over her, taut like Saran Wrap on a dish in the fridge. Her body was a lump underneath it. She sat up quickly, and bright lights swarmed around her. She crawled toward her closet. She crawled inside, slid the door closed, and sat against the wall, in the space she’d cleared among her shoes. Her stupid blue dress from last year brushed her shoulder. Life was endless, endless.

4
    W e’ll have an early dinner, Liz had told Sarabeth, very casual, don’t bring anything, but Sarabeth couldn’t not bring anything, so on her way out of town she’d stopped at the Cheese Board for half a dozen cheese rolls. Slowing as she approached the toll plaza on the San Mateo Bridge, she reached onto the passenger seat for the bag and tore off a little bit of one of the rolls—the same one she’d already molested, she fervently hoped. She put it in her mouth and savored the delicious tang, the way it was both soft and