The Best Thing by Margo Lanagan Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes, and his being just a
tiny
bit self-conscious, not hugely, like his brother, or completely unaware like Oriana. That smile: sort of I-know-I-ought-to-smile, sort of I’m-just-enjoying-myself-anyway. Part of me wants to kidnap this photo, take it off public view, keep it all to myself; part of me wants never to have seen it. Because I can see how Pug was wide open for the world to blunder into, and it did, and I’m going to get flashes of this face (I’ve already had them!) as long as ever I know him, and with every flash this twist inside.
    Dad said, ‘God, remember how nice this street used to be?’ We were driving to Grandma’s, I remember. I looked out the window. It looked okay to me. Just houses, quite neat. Someone had a pair of small concrete lions either side of their gate, which I thought was a cool idea.
    ‘All the big trees are gone,’ said Mum.
    ‘Well, you wouldn’t want roots buggering up your pebblecrete, would you? Look at it, it’s been woggified to death.’
    ‘Da-ave!’
    ‘Well, it has—look, colonnades everywhere! Statues, aluminium windows.’ He shuddered. ‘Used to be nice old cottages all along here.’
    ‘People have different tastes, that’s all. Give ’em a break.’
    At four and a half weeks the embryo looks like a prehistoric animal. Rudimentary heart and eyes have formed, as has a tail,which will disappear within weeks, leaving shrunken tail-bones as a permanent reminder of humankind’s animal past.
    Nobody brought Pug and me together, like Lisa engineering a whole bunch of matches at that party (me and Brenner, Kerry and Cory Worth, Anna and Toby) just to see if she could do it. It just happened. When I think how easily Pug could’ve just walked on past it’s really a bit scary.
    It was a week or so after the miscarriage. I went up to Newtown to look for Christmas presents because I wanted to enjoy myself, but I couldn’t find anything, and halfway through looking I had a weird attack of … I don’t know. The bottom dropped out of my emotions and I fell through. Everything looked
bad
—Newtown grungy and full of nightmare people, all
weird
one way or another, no-one smiling, the shops pathetic little temples of greed, the humidity pressing in, the traffic a herd of mad animals funnelling between the buildings. Worst of all was my life. I hadn’t heard from Brenner all week. It was the day after I’d told Lisa, and I
knew
that was a
bad
stuff-up. I was floundering, horrified at her having wormed most of my story out of me—I could hear her sweet, calculating voice in my head and my own confiding one, see her eyes swivelling away from me. I’d gone too far and I was petrified of what she was going to do. I stood outside Coles Fosseys looking in at the bundles of tinsel, sweating embarrassment and fear.
    I struggled on for a bit, but then I thought,
Stuff it, I’ll go home, go to bed and sleep this off.
So I turned down Mary Street.
    And almost straight away I regretted it, but not quite soon enough to retreat. Four guys straggled across the path and the road, all in top spirits, yelling and pushing at each other. I tried to look invisible and not-caring at the same time.
    But—clunk!—they saw me.
    One whistled and shouted ‘G’day, gorgeous!’ at me. I crossed to the other footpath and he crossed too. He was grinning and glancing at his mates.
    ‘Keep out of my way,’ I said, really
severe.
    He dodged about in front of me, wouldn’t let me pass. ‘Can’t take a compliment, this one. Come on, gorgeous, loosen up. What’s your name, love?’
    ‘Get away!’ I sort of choked. I saw his hand come out.
’Don’t
you touch me!’
    He patted me on the shoulder and let his hand drop. ‘Look me in the face, love. Ask me nicely.’ A real soft, nasty voice.
    ‘Lay off, Ed,’ one of the mates said warningly—that was Pug.
    ‘Just want her to be polite to a guy, mate.’
    I hissed through my teeth at him. ‘Get out of my way,
shithead.
’ Any second I