Grace Read Free Page B

grabbed it first.
    â€œHey, freakshow, what do you keep in here? Body parts? I bet he’s got some dead chick’s head stuffed in here,” he said, laughing.
    â€œJust give it,” Trevor said.
    Mike started to unzip the backpack and stuck his head in to inspect.
    â€œEw, what’s that smell?” he said, jerking his head back. The banana .
    The other guys leaned over to see inside. And suddenly Trevor felt the metal turning into quicksilver, mercury rushing through his veins.
    â€œWhat’s this?” the Sweeney kid asked, reaching in and grabbing the camera from Mrs. D.
    â€œI said, give it, ” Trevor said. He thought about Mrs. D., picking out the camera and paying for it out of her own pocket. He thought about what the kid might do to it.
    â€œGive it, give it,” Ethan mocked, his voice high and sharp.
    Normally, Trevor just tried to ignore these guys, but lately, he couldn’t seem to control himself. It was like this new body of his, these new hands, had a mind of their own. So the next thing Trevor knew, the tray of spaghetti was flying onto the floor and his fists were swinging, though they connected with nothing but air. The whole cafeteria erupted, the chanting starting small and growing bigger, like a heartbeat. Fight, fight, fight.
    His eyes stung and his mouth flooded with the taste of metal. But before he had the satisfaction of his fist making contact with Ethan’s face, someone was yanking his collar hard, choking him. He shook his head like a dog on a chain, and the hands let go, making him stumble backward.
    â€œAll right, that’s enough. Break it up,” Mr. Douglas, the janitor, said.
    Trevor blinked hard and when his eyes focused again, he noticed the way the sunlight was shining through the cafeteria window, casting his own shadow, enormous and dark on the filthy cafeteria floor. And he thought about the gift from Mrs. D. About the camera. About how he might capture this picture: his own terrifying silhouette and all of the other kids’ faces staring at him with something between fascination and horror.
    E lsbeth looked at the catalogues that came in the mail with the models in their bathing suits and flip-flops and dreamed herself somewhere warm. It was April, spring everywhere else but here in Vermont, where yards were still laced with patches of dirty snow and you could still see your breath, like ghosts, when you went outside. Her girlfriend, Twig, went on a cruise for Christmas last year. She and her boyfriend flew down to Miami and then got on a ship to the Bahamas. She came back the color of a ripe peach with streaks of sunshine shimmering in her hair, like she’d captured the sun itself and brought it home with her. This was one of those things Elsbeth ached for, another one of those things she knew that she and Kurt probably wouldn’t ever be able to afford to do. Still, she marked the bright green two-piece in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue with a coupon for mayonnaise she clipped earlier, and set it on the kitchen table next to the stack of neglected bills.
    Elsbeth had worked at the salon all morning and then picked Gracy up from her half day at kindergarten after lunch. Gracy had fallen asleep in the car on the way home and, thankfully, stayed asleep as Elsbeth carried her inside and put her in her bed. Trevor would be at school for another couple of hours, and Kurt would be at the yard until suppertime. There was a roast in the Crock-Pot, so supper was taken care of, and so she had exactly two more hours of peace. Two more hours when she didn’t have to tend to anybody else’s needs except for her own. This was her guilty pleasure. This solitude. Sometimes she just lay down on the couch and closed her eyes for the whole two hours, waiting for Gracy to call for her and break the spell. She knew she could be, should be, catching up on the laundry. She knew she had dishes to do, grout to scrub, floors to mop, but