The Next Queen of Heaven-SA by Gregory Maguire Read Free Book Online Page B

your circuits are fried, this is it,” said Hogan, watching her dress. “Look: Kommandant Mom is off duty on account of a concussion, and for once she’s not stationed at the bottom of the stairs with her arms folded and her foot tapping. And here you are like, like a bobby-soxer, all ponytails and kneesocks. Your tits are so prompt they’re going to get to school ahead of you and erase the blackboard for which loser teacher? Is it Hess in science lab?”

    “Don’t be vulgar. I failed science lab last year and Hess won’t let me back.”

    “You’re being Mom. That’s it. I get it. Why? Guilty conscience? I know you didn’t push her down the stairs that day. You were home sleeping it off.”

    “Are you crazy? I’m just making the best of a bad situation. What if I’m not there, and some social worker snoops in at school? Mr. Reeves might say I’m playing hookey. The bad apple. Maybe they’ll take Mom away to a rehab resettlement camp somewhere.”

    “Works for me. Works wonders for me.”

    “Right. Then they’ll notice we’re minors and you go to a foster home, Hog. Or given you’re sixteen, to some sort of school more like a jail.”

    “They have juvenile delinquent girls in this jail you describe? Paradise.”

    “No. Only guys. Jerk-off smelly bullying morons.”

    Hogan glanced through the hall doorway into the kitchen, where Kirk was cleaning out the fridge and humming something from Mom’s LP of South Pacific. “Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.” Hogan’s voice lowered. “They’d have an awful lot of fun with My Little Pony in there.”

    “Exactly. So off I go to school.” She added, “You gonna drive me or what?”

    “Where’s Caleb, your Mister Motorcycle Man?”

    Tabitha pursed her lips, tamping her lipstick the way her mother always did. “Mmmm,” she said, a beat too long. “Well, let’s go, Hog.”

    Nice of Hogan not to press the issue, she thought. But where was Caleb Briggs? Had she been so very hot the night before Halloween that she had scared him off? Her mind went back to the time she’d seen his bike in the Ames parking lot—the time her mother had started cussing like a streetwalker who has run out of sidewalk. Tabitha hadn’t caught sight of Caleb in the store that day. And those louts lounging around near the soda cans mounded by the front windows—she’d hurried past them in shame and mortification, without giving them a sideways look. But were they Caleb’s friends? And if so, where was he? Not hiding behind shelving to avoid her, the way she had done to avoid Hannah and Solange?

    It was all too confusing. Here she thought she’d convinced Caleb she was sexually provocative enough to last out a set of marriage vows, give good value for money, no prim virginal dope, and she’d quite possibly scared him off with her vigor and, um, imagination.
    Maybe that business with the chocolate-covered cherries and the jumper cables had been a bit too knowing.

    She fingered her white collar into a more belligerent pertness. Hogan was wrong about her strategy. She missed Caleb, and he wasn’t answering her phone calls. So she hoped at least to get some sympathy from someone. Some grown-up to crow, “Your mom has gone temporarily brain dead and here you are, just carrying on! You brave dear!” She imagined the words. She had practiced how she might drop her gaze to the floor and twist her hands together, maybe murmur and blush a little if she could manage it. The problem was that she couldn’t imagine who would address her with such concern. Nobody liked her. Hess had thrown her out of the lab last year when her own personal breakage costs had topped two hundred bucks. That cow McTavish hated her guts. Mr. Abbott didn’t know who she was since he was old enough to be senile and she’d only gone to Civilization Survey, like, twice.

    And her so-called classmates. They were stuck living the lie that was high school. The boys all did sports as if they were