2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas Read Online Free

in.
    Row homes, each bearing five families, border the field. Every morning out of these crowded brick houses emerge the sorriest kids in the world, yawning into maroon V-necks, sneering at each other to get off, stop it, find the cat, stop doing that to the cat, shut up, leave it, give it back! The proposition of the yard is conducted on an upward slant, so that children going to school can climb from their cruddy homes with plenty of time to appreciate the magnitude of the church and school.
Check me out
, the building says,
this is what happens for those who pray
. At the end of each learning day, the school dispenses the children back to their cruddy homes, quick as gravity.
    Here is Madeleine, on the day of the caramel apples, blending in with these kids as they trudge to the schoolyard to engage in a perfunctory morning recess. Madeleine prefers to spend this and every recess alone, singing scales under her breath, walking laps up and down the parking lot. Madeleine has no friends: Not because she contains a tender grace thatfifth graders detect and loathe. Not because she has a natural ability that points her starward, though she does. Madeleine has no friends because she is a jerk.
    “Look alive, bubble butt,” she said to Marty Welsh, who was dawdling at the pencil sharpener. That his parents had divorced the week before did not matter to Madeleine. An absent father doesn’t give you the right to sharpen your pencil for, like, half an hour.
    This is what Madeleine said to Jill McCormick (darting between her brothers, who swat at her) on the occasion of Jill’s umpteenth attempt to befriend her: “Your clinginess is embarrassing.”
    Madeleine had one friend: Emily, a broad-shouldered ice skater who wound up at Saint Anthony’s as the result of a clerical mistake. Once, Madeleine watched her make a series of circles on an ice rink. On solid ground, Emily still walked as if negotiating with a sliver of blade. Her parents moved to Canada so she could live closer to ice. Not before she taught Madeleine every curse word she knew, in the girls’ bathroom on her last day, with reverence:
shit, cunt, piss, bitch
. Madeleine uses these words when one of her classmates tries to hang around, as in:
Get your piss cunt out of my creamy fucking way
.
    There was a reprieve in her isolation in the weeks following her mother’s death when Madeleine, polite with tragedy, allowed Jill to pal around. It wasn’t long before she regained her wits and shooed her away.
    Even jerks have mothers who die.
    Into the thoughts of every playing child careens the clanging of an oversized bell, rung with gusto by Principal Randles.The children line up according to grade and height. Some of the older ones take their time. Principal Randles eyes these delinquents and rings harder. She will ring and ring until she achieves order. Until the kids standing closest to her clamp their hands over their ears. Madeleine is corralled into line by her homeroom teacher, Miss Greene. Finally, the ringing ends. A chrism of sweat shines on the principal’s neck.
    Miss Greene kneels next to Madeleine. On the stage of Madeleine’s school-to-home world, Miss Greene is a main player. Madeleine has memorized every intonation of her teacher’s voice, every possible way she wears her blunt, nut-colored hair, every time she has varied from her black sweater on black skirt wardrobe—twice. Miss Greene always smells like a tangerine and Madeleine likes that she never wears holiday-themed apparel like the other homeroom teacher, who today wears a holly-leaf tracksuit.
    Miss Greene keeps her voice low. “Clare Kelly has been involved in an accident and won’t be in today.”
    “What kind of accident?” Madeleine says.
    “A serious one.”
    “Is she dead?”
    “She’s not dead.” Miss Greene makes the expression that means:
That is a disrespectful question
. “I’d like you to sing ‘Here I am, Lord’ at this morning’s mass.”
    “Has this been