Picture Me Gone Read Free

greet it. She walks straight through as if the dog does not exist. The dog seems accustomed to this and stands to move out of her way. I approach the dog and she stands perfectly still while I kneel to pat her. She has beautiful brown eyes. Loneliness flows off her in waves.
    So she is Matthew’s dog. The name on her tag is Honey.
    Inside the house, bookcases line most of the walls and there is a huge glass-fronted stove with “eco-burner” etched on the glass. It burns the smoke too, says Suzanne.
    I wonder how it does that.
    All of the bookcases have tiny lights built in, and all of the walls and ceilings too, so the house seems to twinkle.
    It’s so beautiful, I say to Suzanne, who is lifting Gabriel out of his padded suit. He’s awake now, staring like a baby owl. He waves his hands at Honey, who watches him gravely. Suzanne points at the door. Out, she says, and Honey walks out of the room.
    It was built by an architect who ran out of money, Suzanne says. It made him famous though, and now he’s built another just like it, only bigger, for himself. It’s called The Box House.
    As we walk through the house, I collect images like a camera clicking away. I can barely remember what Matthew looks like and there are no pictures of him to remind me. No picture of him and Suzanne on their wedding day or him with Gabriel. Or just him.
    Click.
    Other details leap out at me: A pair of muddy shoes. A stack of bills. A cracked window. A closed door. A pile of clothes. A skateboard. A dog.
Click click click.
    First impressions? This is not a happy house.

six
    M y best friend in London is called Catlin. She has hair like straw and thin arms and legs, and starting from when we were seven or eight we always went to her house after school, partly because it was on the way to mine and partly because the top floor has a hidden passageway under the roof through a door at the back of an old closet. Perfect for a clubhouse.
    We designed code books and stashed our pocket money in a box under the floorboards, making plans to hide out when the enemy invaded Camden. Catlin was big on logistics, so we spent days drawing maps of underground escape tunnels running all through London, connecting to sewers and ghost tube stations.
    All the people we knew were rated according to how much of a security risk they’d turn out to be when things turned bad. Cat and I had top security clearance and were Head of State and Head of Security respectively. Gil was Senior Codebreaker with four-star clearance. Marieka would be Chief of Operations. Five star.
    Catlin’s parents were more of a problem. Her father shouted a lot, worked most of the time and was best avoided on the occasions he appeared at home. He and her mother rarely spoke. We made them Protocol Officers, a mysterious title, with only three-star clearance. I thought Cat might be offended that her parents had less trustworthy rankings than mine but she didn’t seem to mind.
    One day on the way to school Catlin said in her casual voice, My parents don’t like each other. She looked at me, watching my reaction.
    Lots of parents don’t, I said, because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
    They’re probably getting a divorce, she said.
    I thought she might be crying because she sounded strange, but when I turned to look she was crouching down with an insane grin on her face and then she launched herself straight up into the air like a spring, shouting, I HATE THEM! with something like glee.
    For a smallish person she has a very loud voice.
    Shouting seemed to make her feel better, though I doubted what she said was true. Most people don’t actually hate their parents, even if they are horrible. Her mother, at least, isn’t horrible. She always brought cake and drinks on a tray up to the top floor where we were planning for the invasion. She never knocked, just quietly left it next to the closet door. I liked her for that, though she always seemed a bit sleepwalkerish. The house as a whole