A Blue So Dark Read Online Free

onto the wheels and letting it roll toward me.
    "What? I-"
    "Yeah-take it. Fix it."
    I'm flabbergasted, whopper-jawed. Stuff like this just doesn't happen to me. "How do I-"
    "I think I know where to find you, Aura," he says with a wink and saunters off down the sidewalk, leaving me there beneath the maple, savoring his lingering steamy scent.
    I feel all hot and wobbly inside, and my brain is just a broken piece of driftwood being slammed by the tide. In our pre-Ethan days, guys got thrust on me by Janny-like that moronic soccer player, Adam Riley, the one who used to hang out with Janny's Ace. Guys would flirt with me on assignment. But this was-What just happened? I wonder, daydreaming about what it would have been like if Janny'd been here to see it.
    As I try to savor my weird, unbalanced feeling-excitement and sweet wonder-I look up at the window and I see my mom. She's at the front of her classroom, writing something on the same blackboard where she taped the print of Bedroom in Arles. At first, all I see is the word at the top: PERSPECTIVE, all caps, which seems normal enough. But along the side she's also written PEPPER and PET, which doesn't make any sense at all. Those words have no place up there on that board. I curse the window under my breath for not allowing me to see the looks on her students' faces. And I start to get the hot chills all over my body again.
    It's okay, it's fine, it could be anything, you don't know what they've been talking about in there, I try to tell myself, but my heart is on fire.
    Mom reaches out-almost as if to erase her words with her finger-but winds up touching them in the same way she would if she were blind and had to rely on a Braille sign to find out which bathroom belonged to the ladies.
    She looks through the window, and flashes that everything's okay smile she gave me when I got mono from playing retarded make-out games with that douche bag Adam Riley in the ninth grade. The same smile she gave me when Dad had left, and I caught her sitting on the floor of her half-empty closet, hugging one stray loafer to her chest. The same smile she flashed before standing up on her own two feet, wiping the last tear track from her cheek, and saying, "Come on, friend, let's fill in all these empty spaces, you and me."
    And just like I have for the past few weeks, I tell myself that everything really is fine.

Occasionally, family members may reach a point in which they cannot tolerate the odd behavior of the schizophrenic any longer. Often, this leads them to seek help. Other times, it causes said family member to -walk away, like the complete raving jerk that she is.
    don't have a clue how to skate (and don't exactly want to look like a moron trying to figure it out on a busy sidewalk at quarter to one on a Saturday afternoon), so I carry the board to Zellers Photography. I told Mom only vague basics about my little cash-basis job, jumping over the name-Zellers-like a hopscotch square. Mom isn't even aware that I know about this particular studio, but it's not that hard to figure out, you know? I mean, the owner, Nell, puts twenty-percent-off coupons for senior portraits in the Crestview High newspaper. Zellers Photography, the address right there in black and white. And the way everybody at school talks her up, you'd think the white cursive Zellers in the bottom right-hand corner of the senior pics she takes is actually some ultra-chic fashion label. So why wouldn't I be curious?
    I'm frozen for a minute on the sidewalk, just beyond the plate glass, because I can see Nell in there, sitting in the front room of the studio with her chin-length white hair and her big, round black glasses. She has a phone to her ear, and she takes off her glasses to put something up to her eye-some magnifying lens or a jeweler's loupe-and she squints at a sheet in her hands. Probably, I think, some negatives.
    She hangs up the phone, slips back into her glasses. When she sees me, she throws her chair back so