Little Blue Lies Read Free

keeping my eyes open to count allthe bubbles rushing at me. I am aware of shifting positions on the bed, twisting this way and that, with my phone on the night table as if it can be made aware that I am ignoring it and thereby provoked into ringing.
    Knock, knock.
    â€œWho’s there?”
    This is neither a knock-knock joke nor a real question, since we know this is my mother at the door. She works, like I said, at home, which sucks sometimes, and she has ears like a bat. She’s kind of obsessive about something I’m not thrilled to talk about, but suffice it to say my tossing and turning just now provoked her into action. Somewhere along the line she got the idea that this summer I’m jerking myself to the point of hairy-handed criminal insanity, and so, by golly, as long as she is in the house, monkeys will not be spanked. Nor will there be any snapping the squid, flogging the dolphin, whacking the haddock, pulling the python, choking the chicken, or clubbing the baby seal. She’s the World Wildlife Fund of self-pleasure.
    Usually the ruse is a snack of some kind.
    â€œIt’s me.”
    â€œHi, Mom. I’m a little busy right now.”
    â€œI have tuna on toast and kettle chips, and bread-and-butter pickle slices,” she snaps, with such urgency that I expect to see the indentation of her face present itself in the door.
    â€œThanks,” I say, “but I’ll—”
    The phone beeps me off midsentence. I scramble across the bed to get it.
    â€œHello?” Mom says, a bit exasperated.
    I grunt nonwords at her as I retrieve the text.
    â€œArggh,” she says, storming away.
    â€œSorry,” I say. I was rude. Though not as rude as she thinks.
    Come over right now right now, is what the text tells me to do.
    Right now right now my feet are on the floor, through the door, and down the stairs, and I hear my mother crow something in my direction, but I have no time for that as I slam the big oak front door behind me, and because of a light rain falling and coating the pavement, I pretty well hydroplane all the way over to Junie’s place with “stupid” surely smeared all over my face.
    I have to say. I have to say. I think I like Junie Blue even more than I thought I did, and I am undecided about whether to tell her that.
    As I turn the final slick corner onto June’s street—rain always seems to rain rainier on her neighborhood than mine—I lose my legs. My feet shoot sideways in the slickness, and my whole self follows, until I feel like I’m sliding safely into third. In fact I am sliding unsafely right off the sidewalk and into light traffic that screeches and beeps. Somebody screams terror and somebody else laughs and cheers, until meand a four-wheeler monstrosity skitter to a halt about three feet before death. Mine, most likely.
    I am staring straight up into a wheel well when the lady who was driving comes running over to where I am, crying wildly—her—as if I am for sure already dead and murdering her insurance premium situation.
    She stares down at me with her hands covering her mouth, but they don’t filter out any of the blubbering. “Awwwwww,” she says.
    â€œYou’ve got some rust starting under here,” I say, so unbelievably composed that I fall instantly in love with myself and curse the fact that Junie Blue is not right here to see it. Actually, lots of neighbors seem to have gathered, so I squiggle around to see if maybe . . . but no. My heart, despite appearances, is running at about 8,000 rpm, so I can’t be all that cool, although to be fair it’s been at about 6,500 since I got the text.
    â€œWait!” the driver woman calls as I scoot off in the direction of the Blue house—it’s brown—without even a little bit of further ado.
    â€œDo it again,” a guy yells from the sidewalk. “I didn’t have my camera ready.”
    I get laughter and