Picture Me Gone Read Free Page A

felt dulled, as if someone had sucked all of the color out with a straw. I wondered if Catlin noticed that it was different from other houses or whether it just looked normal to her.
    This year, for the first time, Catlin and I stopped being in the same class together. She was suddenly wild and loud—rolling her school skirt up short and hanging out with older boys, the ones who scare old people on buses by swearing and smoking cigarettes. It was weird not to walk home with her every day but eventually I got used to it. Sometimes, walking past her house, I had to stop myself turning up the path out of habit.
    It wasn’t exactly like we avoided each other, and I didn’t exactly miss her because she seemed like someone I no longer knew. But every single day I missed the person who used to be my friend. The worst was once when our eyes met by accident and she looked away.
    Then, on the last day of spring term, she ran up behind me and shouted
Boom!
like in the old days and we ended up walking home together, pretending everything was normal.
    Oh my god, Catlin said, eyes huge. Did you see Miss Evans as the Easter bunny?
    Miss Evans is one of our PE teachers. She’s a genuine freak, never missing a chance to dress up as Father Christmas or Karl Marx or Harry Potter.
    Très awkward, I said.
    Très très awkward!! She danced around me, hands fluttering like a comedy ballerina.
    We fell back in step again.
    Are you around over Easter? Her tone was casual, her head almost in her schoolbag as she rummaged around for a lipstick.
    The question was surprising because what about her new gang of cool friends? I have to go to New York, I told her. We’re visiting an old friend of my dad’s.
    She didn’t answer and it made me feel like apologizing for going away, which was ridiculous, as she’d barely spoken to me for months.
    We got to her house and she didn’t even say good-bye, just turned and ran up the path like she was angry, and I wondered whether it was because I was going away and she wasn’t, or because maybe she wanted to be friends again when it wasn’t a convenient time for me.
    Hey, Cat! I called after her. I’ll let you know what America’s like! But she was halfway through the door and didn’t even turn round.
    I stared at the door as it slammed and just as I was leaving I saw her disembodied face peering back at me through the window. Then both her hands crept up into the window like they belonged to someone else and she made a horrible face and started strangling herself, stuck out her tongue, went cross-eyed and disappeared down the bottom of the window.
    Bye! I shouted again and waved.
    A minute later I got a text from her. It said: bring me back an American Easter egg
    And I answered: save me a London one
    And she wrote back: OK
    And I wrote back: OK
    And she wrote back: Make it a big one
    And I wrote back: Ditto
    And we both felt better.

seven
    I am dizzy and a little sick with jet lag. Suzanne puts me in a small room off the study with a built-in bed. One end of my bed is a glass wall that faces out into the woods. She shows me how to use the blinds but I leave them open. I am so tired that I don’t remember falling asleep, and a minute later it is noon the next day. Trees break the light up into fragments; above them, the sky is blue and clear. It couldn’t be more different from our view in London, which is mainly of other houses.
    Gil brings me milky coffee in bed. He smiles but looks distracted. Now that I am fully awake I scan the room—a small desk, a metal swivel chair, two pairs of sneakers neatly placed in a corner. A bookshelf holds the
Guinness Book of Records
from a few years ago, a US Army Survival Manual, an ancient copy of
Treasure Island
with a worn leather cover, a tall pile of school notebooks and sports magazines. Just above is a shelf on which silver swimming trophies stand side by side and I realize with a start that this is Owen’s room. There’s a picture in a silver frame of