The Girls of No Return Read Free

to save her life. Someone to be pitied, talked about in hushed tones, tiptoed around in case she gets pissed and does something drastic, like calmly pick up her water glass and drop it on the floor.
    It shattered all over the rough wooden floorboards into shards the size of my palm, shards the size of my pinkie. A neat little river began edging its way toward my shoe.
    â€œJesus!” Terri was already out of her chair with a napkin, bending to mop up the water. She knelt next to me and dabbed at it fruitlessly. Her napkin was soaked. My dad just sat there, staring into his burger with a defeated smile on his face, like he’d just watched the tragic end of a movie that he’d seen twelve times before and was disturbed, but no longer shocked, when the heroine jumped off the cliff. The waitress was there too, with a broom and a long-handled dustbin, and she swept up the glass without looking at any of us.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Terri kept saying to the floorboards. “I’m so sorry.” She was still just kneeling there, and she wasn’t looking at anyone either, the soggy napkin lying like an embarrassing fact next to her.
    â€œNothing to apologize for,” said a new woman’s voice. “Water over rocks. Things break and come together. Nothing can be counted on, as Lida has so effectively shown us.”
    I nearly jumped when the husky voice said my name, and I looked up to find a tiny woman with a diamond stud in her nose, blond hair cut in a short pixie, and wearing a tank top and striped overalls that reminded me of a railroad conductor’s uniform. She was shaking my dad’s hand and saying “Margaret Olsen, nice to meet you,” even before I connected the voice with the woman. She looked like a sparrow but had the voice of a chain-smoker.
    My dad, to his credit, took it all in stride. He glanced at the nose stud, but generally maintained eye contact as he stood and introduced himself.
    â€œAnd this, obviously, is Lida,” he said, rocking forward on his toes once or twice. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or oddly proud. Maybe he was glad that I was “acting out,” in case this Margaret Olsen had any doubts about my placement in the school. After all, the Alice Marshall School didn’t take your run-of-the-mill good kids, girls with high GPAs and carloads of well-rounded friends. A broken glass was probably part of the entrance exam, and I had clearly passed.
    â€œLida,” Margaret said, sticking out a delicate hand and grasping my own in a viselike grip. “Lida Lida Lida.” She shook my hand in time with the words. “A name for a flower,” she said, “or an exotic plant with medicinal properties.” She narrowed her eyes at me then, just a little, and I wondered if this shaman act of hers was just a charade. “What kind of properties will you have, Lida?” she asked.
    I looked toward the door. I stared at the moose head just above it. I examined that moose head like it was a stained glass window. I did not reply.
    My dad chuckled anxiously. “Never knew her to be shy,” he said.
    Terri was standing by now too, assiduously brushing at the knees of her pants. “I’m Terri,” she said, holding out her hand to Margaret. “Lida’s stepmother.”
    Margaret nodded. “I see.” She angled her body so that she was standing slightly between me and my dad and Terri, and said in a low voice, “I’m not sure that we received all of Lida’s personal information in her application packet. I don’t mean to pry, but her mother is . . . ?”
    â€œShe’s dead,” I said.
    Margaret turned toward me, so she didn’t see the expression on my father’s face. He opened his mouth and closed it again.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Margaret said.
    â€œDon’t be.”
    There was a long, awkward pause. My dad tried to catch my eye, but I looked away.
    Finally,