The Lonely Read Free

little box with her fingers, centered it on me, and said, “You’re the picture of sanity.”
    I could see how I must have looked between her squared fingers, hunched shoulders and droop-faced. I wouldn’t speak until she put them away. After another long moment she finally took her fingers down.
    â€œWhen did you start smoking?”
    â€œI’m not smoking.”
    â€œEaster, I can see the smoke behind you. If you’re not smoking then you should be more concerned about your pants being on fire.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œIs this because of Lev? Does the wonderful Lev smoke?”
    And I turned quiet again, and tried to put my face into an expression of The Terrible Thing, so she could read it there without my having to breathe the words to life. But instead she looked confused and more annoyed.
    â€œEaster, would you just tell me what’s wrong? This is so irritating!”
    â€œI don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œWell then why did you come down here? Why did you even bother! Get out of here Easter! Scram! You’re nothing but an intruder. A germ. A piece of sand agitating my oyster. But you’re not a pearl; you’re a tumor or a wart or a cyst. Get out!”
    And just then, the glowing red cigarette that had been burning down behind my back seared my thumb, causing me to react: jump back and look down at my freshly reddened appendage. As soon as I looked back up, Julia was gone. The creek gushed cold and lonely in front of me.
    The Terrible Thing, The Terrible Thing, The Terrible Thing. There it was. In the bathroom. In The Tooth House. Just waiting for me. The Father wouldn’t find it. He might not notice for days because he never, ever used our bathroom. Our cluttered, too-warm torture chamber.
    â€œJulia?”
    I knew she wouldn’t respond.
    â€œJulia, it was terrible. A terrible, terrible thing.”
    But she was gone.
    I maneuvered my way back onto the path, brushed a few burrs off my sweater, and let the branches close up behind me. After a few minutes walking I wouldn’t even know where to find that sunny spot again.
    Before I could move much further, another distraction caught my eye, the sun reflecting off a glimmering something lodged between two rocks, deeper into the highway side of The Woods. I left the path and moved closer and saw that the glimmering something was a piece of metal, attached to a strip of leather wedged between two giant boulders. As I pulled and I gouged and I scraped around the intriguing item, the rocks which had seemed as stuck still as tiles shifted suddenly with a growl. I jumped and let out a little yelp, then looked around hotly. Julia probably heard that.
    I pulled on it again angrily, revenge on an inanimate object, and this time it slipped right out, causing me to lose my balance and fall backward. I was so furious with the little item that I needed a moment of silence to compose myself properly, after which I recognized what it was: a horse bridle. With an ornately embellished E embossed into the side.
    Elizabeth’s bridle.
    What the hell was Elizabeth’s bridle doing out here? Elizabeth’s bridle was supposed to be buried somewhere deep in Phyllis’s basement, wedged between a crocheted photo album and a ring of mink pelts, not stuck between two rocks, two rocks that’d probably been wedged together since some Lonely woman gave birth to a Lonely girl, and that Lonely girl gave birth to Phyllis and Phyllis had The Mother and The Mother had me.
    Then there was a low rumble in what sounded like the stomach of The Woods, a growling from somewhere far away. A pair of squawking birds flew from the treetops, startled. I was startled too. I’d never heard anything like it before. Then another growl, louder, and in a split second a giant boulder was tumbling over the rocks, about to splatter me into tomato paste.

Then
    After the boulder came