Wintergirls Read Free Page B

rain in my eyes, the blue water under my skin. They pick up every sound on their collar microphones. They want to pull me inside of them, but they’re afraid.
    I am contagious.
    I tiptoe to the nurse’s office, hand on the wall to keep me vertical. If I run or breathe too deep, the cheap stitches holding me together will snap, and all the stickiness inside will pour out and burn through the concrete.
    The nurse ruffles her feathers when I slink in. She turns down the radio, cool jazz, and looks me over, hands on her hips, eyes sad and friendly.
    “I thought you might stay home today,” she says.
    “It’s got to be a shock. Cassie was real close to you, wasn’t she?”

    “I don’t feel good,” I say. “Can I lie down for a while?”
    “You know the rules.”
    She is a crafty witch in nurse’s clothing.
    “Okay.” I sit on the chair next to her desk and let her take my temperature and blood pressure.
    She wraps the cuff around my arm bone. “Are you still being weighed regularly?”
    “Once a week. I’m fine. I don’t need to step on your scale.”
    “You don’t look fine.” She jots down my numbers. “If you’re going to stay here, you have to get something in your system. If you don’t, it’s back to class.”
    Do I want to die from the inside out or the outside in?
    She opens up a carton of orange juice, pours it into a paper cup, and hands it to me as she removes the ther-mometer. “I’m serious.”
    I take the cup from her. My throat wants it my brain wants it my blood wants it my hand does not want this my mouth does not want this.
    The nurse wants this and I need to hide. I force it down.
    The door opens and two guys walk in; one bleeding from his nose, the other looking a little freaked out at the sight of blood. The nurse makes the bleeder sit with his head tilted back and his buddy sit with his head between his knees so he doesn’t pass out.
    I throw the paper cup in the trash can, take the newspaper off her desk, and retreat to the cot at the far end of the room.

    “You’ll drink another one in fifteen minutes,” the nurse says. “Or you can have a lollipop: grape or lime.”
    “Right.”
    I pull the little screen in front of the cot, sit down, and search through the newspaper. Local section, page 2. The article runs for a couple of inches, next to an ad for fur coats, thirty percent off.

    I lie down on the cot, the paper pillowcase crackling in my ears like radio static.
    The buzzer sounds. The hall fills with a river of bodies and voices whispering that Cassie was murdered/no, she hung herself/no, she smoked or snorted her way to the Final Exit. She’d try anything once, did you hear about the time under the bleachers/at the mall/at summer camp?
    She drove herself into a speeding train/jumped without a parachute/strapped on a weight belt and dove into the ocean.
    She offered herself to the big, bad wolf and didn’t scream when he took the first bite.
    . . . body found in a motel room, alone . . .
    The boys are gone. The nurse takes the newspaper away and spreads a thin blanket over me.

    “Can I get another one?” I ask. “I’m cold.”
    “Sure thing.” She walks to the supply closet, her shoes squeaking on the polished floor.
    “Have you heard anything about the funeral?” I ask.
    “The superintendent’s office sent an e-mail,” she says.
    “The viewing will be Wednesday night at St. Stephen’s.
    They’ll bury her on Saturday.” She walks toward me, her arms loaded down. “Get some sleep now and remember: you’re drinking more orange juice when you wake up.”
    “I promise.”
    She covers me with all of the blankets she has (five) and the jackets from the lost-and-found box, because I am freezing. I drift into the armpits of strangers, tasting their manic salt, and sleep to forget everything.
    Emma is buckled in the backseat watching a movie on the DVD player in her lap, eating potato chips and pounding a Mountain Dew slushie.
    “Don’t tell Jennifer,” I