Vassa in the Night Read Free Page B

to my bed and curl up with my book. They both keep watching me to see if I’m embarrassed yet, which I am, so I turn my back. In a way it’s my fault that this keeps happening. If Erg can’t control herself, then it’s my job to keep her in line. I start thinking about those metal key chains that snap shut. Maybe Erg is going to get one installed around her neck, though I’m not sure if there’s a way I can attach the other end inside my pocket that she won’t be able to undo. Her hands are shaped like mittens with nothing but thin lines to show the separations between her fingers, but she does have opposable thumbs and she can work them like a fiend. You’ve never seen a human being with hands that quick and sly.
    Maybe Stephanie dozes off at some point, because a while later I feel my bed sinking behind me. I roll onto my back and Chelsea is there, looking down at me with concern. “Hey,” she whispers, “I can understand if you don’t want to talk about it in front of Stephanie, V.” I just look at her. She’s trying to be sweet but there’s nothing much I can say. “Look, okay, I have a theory, Vassa? That you’re compensating for your parents being gone by stealing things that represent the love you deserve? Symbolically? And you’re right, you do deserve that love, but I’m just trying to tell you that this isn’t the way to get it. Nothing you take can make up for your mom dying or your dad being … away.”
    None of us ever say directly what happened to him. The facts of the case just howl for euphemism.
    â€œI know that,” I tell her. “Chelsea, look, I really do appreciate what you’re trying to do, or what you think you’re doing, but I’m not going to confess when I didn’t take the damn locket!”
    â€œA present from our mother? When you lost your mom? Really?” She does a fantastic job of loading every syllable with significance. “Anyway he’s Steph’s dad, too. It’s not like you’ve got some special relationship with tragedy. Do you ever think about how all of this affects her?”
    Maybe not. I maybe tend to repress the reality that Steph and I share a father.
    â€œNot when I’m trying to read,” I tell her.
    Chelsea sighs. “I’m here whenever you want to talk. Just think about what I’m telling you. Please?”
    She gets up again, but she’s only going back to her own bed a few feet away.
    I’ll try to break it down for you. Chelsea and Stephanie have the same mother but different fathers; Steph and I have the same father but different mothers; Chelsea is oldest, Steph is second, and I’m the youngest, but only by a week; and yes, that means my dad got both our moms pregnant at almost the same time, maybe on the same night for all I know. He spent the next ten years going back and forth between them, depending on who made him feel guiltiest, I guess, and then my mom considerately died and simplified his decision-making process. So he married Iliana, making her actually my stepmother for all of five months, and then bailed on all of us in dramatic style.
    In consequence of our scrambled parentage we’re all different colors: Chelsea is chestnut brown, Stephanie is kind of beige, and I’m almost disturbingly pale. If I didn’t dye my hair I’d look a lot like a human version of Erg, all blue eyes and raven tresses. Chelsea is the smartest, due to get the hell out of here in September on a full scholarship, assuming September ever comes that is, Stephanie doesn’t have two brain cells to bang together, and I get by. So Chelsea and I aren’t actually blood but she more or less considers me a sister, and we might even love each other most of the time, but Steph, who is related by blood, definitely thinks of me as an interloper, and we maybe hate each other just a microscopic bit, though sometimes we have fun