The View From Who I Was by Heather Sappenfield Read Free Book Online Page B

LIFE in Chateau Antunes’s museum living room—the board laid out, the money and cards in neat piles on the coffee table next to a beach-ball-sized silver saucer mounded with pistachios. Two Christmases ago we’d asked for the game, picturing us and Mom and Dad seated around it, actually laughing like the family in the commercial. After unwrapping it, we’d set the game on this coffee table, in plain sight for the whole day.
    No one said a word about it, though, and we never worked up the courage to ask them to play. Pathetic. And Corpse played it now? After Ash had shown up at the door, Gabe had said “Do you have any games?” and gotten it out to ease the tension. As if. Funny how things work.
    Corpse slouched on the velvety couch, Ash in the leather chair adjacent, a dancing kachina doll under glass on the end table at their elbows. Gabe sat on the floor, a Turkish carpet beneath him, the wide gas fireplace flaming over his shoulder. Above its carved wooden mantel hung the peace pipe, a carved-stone eagle’s head for its bowl and three feathers draping from its stem by rawhide laces. I floated around the room, inspecting Mom’s higher-placed artifacts up close.
    â€œI still can’t believe Gabe saw you first,” Ash said, joking but also not. “Honestly, Oona, we’ve been best friends forever.”
    Corpse’s eyes met Gabe’s. Over the last week, he’d visited every day.
    â€œAnyway, so now Paula and Kyle are an item and I’m single. After all that,” Ash said. “Paula’s such a jerk. I’ve always hated her.”
    Corpse felt the familiar sandpaper rub of Ash’s remarks. I supposed Ash had texted us about breaking up with Kyle, but Corpse hadn’t even turned on our phone since the dance. Ash obviously thought she was being ignored. I guess we were ignoring her, ignoring the world, by not even opening that beaded purse. How had we been so blind to how her every word ground us down?
    Gabe and Corpse said at the same time, “It’s your turn, Ash.”
    â€œOkay,” she said, like whatever. She leaned forward, her fuzzy, V-neck sweater flashing cleavage, and spun the plastic wheel in the board’s center. It whirred like a gear. Ash counted out her spaces and moved her tiny orange car forward. They were all halfway across the board; had careers and starter homes, were just building their fortunes.
    When had Ash started wearing low-cut shirts every single day?
    â€œPayday and a raise. Goodie! Give me ninety-thousand dollars,” she said.
    Gabe counted out the money as Corpse spun the wheel.
    â€œGod, I don’t want to go to school tomorrow. Mondays suck,” Ash said.
    Corpse couldn’t even think about school. She still tired like she was a thousand years old, and her missing digits wailed. Faint purple crescents hung below her eyes, and though the bandages were off, her cheek resembled a tilled field. Mostly, though, we weren’t ready to face the stares that had nothing to do with her appearance. We’d accumulated enough credits to graduate after first semester, so it didn’t matter if she was there. Besides, it had dawned on us last spring, just before Gabe arrived in our life, that Yale would never deny us acceptance—Dad had established a monster scholarship fund for immigrant students there. All our hard-earned A’s had been for nothing. Actually, that’s not true; the A’s had come easy.
    â€œOlivia and Dylan broke up too, did I tell you?” Ash said. “I’ve always thought he’s such a hottie.”
    Corpse moved her car along the spaces, feeling Ash’s gossip turn the world gooey. You got the looks, but I got the cleavage , Ash had said the night of the winter formal, when we’d given Ash’s dress a double-take. She’d changed so much.
    Or had she? Maybe we’d changed. Ash had been our best friend since kindergarten, after all. I