Touch by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online Page A

track.
    Once, we were shooting in the town park, and Daria Wells walked by. She didn’t seem at all surprisedto see us, so I figured that she and Chris had talked, and he’d told her we would be there. I couldn’t see how the boys thought she’d gotten so hot. She still looked chunky and snooty. Her breasts weren’t nearly as big as mine. It struck me how weird it was even to be thinking like that. But as I looked at her, I sort of got why Chris liked her. Either she’d gotten taller, or she held herself tall. She no longer rounded her shoulders. She looked really comfortable with the whole thing of being a girl. It seemed strange that she could get away with it, being as smart as she was. Obviously, math wasn’t the only thing she was smart at.
    In a high, unnatural voice, Chris said, “Hey, Daria! Want to be in our movie? We could write you in.”
    We could? I thought.
    “Oh, no, thank you, Chris,” Daria said. “Acting isn’t my thing. I’d prefer to produce someday.”
    Produce? I thought. Pathetic!
    “Gosh,” said Chris. “That’s amazing. I’ll bet you’d really be good at it.”
    Shakes and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. It was hard not to laugh. Only then did I realizethat I’d been a little worried ever since Chris asked her to be in our movie.
    Actually, acting was Daria’s thing. She made a big show of being superior and bored.
    Finally, she said, “Bye, I guess.”
    I said, “Bye, she guesses ?” Shakes started to laugh, or maybe he was just shaking. Then I saw him look at Chris, and turn away and do his funny, hop-walk a few steps away, and then back.
    In fact, our film wasn’t boring at all, though maybe that episode might have been better if Daria hadn’t made everybody self-conscious.
    That was the episode in which Kevin shot and then strangled me because I’d cheated on him with Chris. In the installment after that, my body washed up on the shore of the lake and the three of them had to figure out who had killed me, and why. I can’t remember the details. I could look it up on YouTube. I could watch how happy we were that summer before school started. Or how happy we were trying to be. But it was happy, really, compared to what came after.
    That’s why I don’t want to watch it, though I thinkabout it when I’m on YouTube. I know better than to go there. It would break my heart to see us still being best friends before we reached the point of no return, the point where we are now—the point at which I’m the accuser, and my best friends are the defendants. This time, Shakes the Detective can’t solve the crime and make everything all right.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Doctor Atwood says, “There’s one part of the story I don’t understand.”
    “ One part?” I say. “You don’t understand one part ? There’s a zillion and one parts of the story I don’t get. So maybe if you tell me what that one part is, I can ask you about the other zillion.”
    “I’m sorry,” says Doctor Atwood. “Obviously, there are mysteries here that need to be cleared up. That’s whyyou’re coming to see me, Maisie. So we can figure it out together. Maybe I should have said there’s one detail that I don’t get.”
    “Try me,” I say. I make my eyes go out of focus, and I concentrate on one of Doctor Atwood’s masks, until its eyes swim together and it turns into Cyclops. I can tell she thinks she’s onto something big. Maybe she imagines that she’s going to catch me in one of those tiny slipups that give the whole case away when the cops are interviewing a suspect on TV. Something that will prove I’m lying, that the incident didn’t happen the way I say it did.
    Isn’t that what this is all about? Someone has to be lying. Either it’s me, or it’s Chris and Kevin and Shakes. Are these sessions with Doctor Atwood all about finding out whether the liar is me? I tell myself I’m just being a paranoid teen. Joan believes me, and she was the one who suggested I go see Doctor