A Blue So Dark Read Online Free Page A

dramatically, it almost looks like a scene from a silent movie. She opens the front door and stares at me, her lips strung about as tight as one of those high wires that acrobats are always swinging off of at the circus. "Kid," she says, "if you don't get the balls to come in soon, I'm going to go nuts."
    "Excuse me?"
    "Quit hovering," she says, glaring at me like I'm some random teenager who's chasing walk-ins away from her store by doing a bunch of fancy skateboard tricks down her front steps. Like I'm just some troublemaker-Scat, kid, no handouts for you.
    Her eyes run me over, up and down. Me in my dad's ex-weekend jeans-the ones he used to pad around in every Saturday, with the Metallica patch on the backside-and an oversized hoodie with giant paint splotches, my coarse black hair falling out from a sloppy ponytail. "That's what you wear to work. After you don't even bother showing up or calling last weekend," she says, like what I have is some office job, the kind of thing where I need to wear heels and know my Social Security number and be the legal age for official employment. Her eyes are like shish kebab skewers.
    "Nell," I say, wounded. Literally wounded, as if it's my mother that's getting after me. My voice comes out highpitched and whiny, like a child's, which I hate.
    "Nell," she mimics, singsong, like it's a chant we should be jumping rope to. "Don't tell me-you've got problems." She says it kind of snotty, a la some sweatshop owner with a whip. But her lashes fly backward behind her glasses and her eyes dilate, like she's a little afraid there might really be trouble.
    "Maybe I do," I snap back, thinking about Mom and the murky tide I'm afraid is trying to roll in.
    Nell's chest heaves. She shakes her head, rubs her chin. Her eyes hit the skateboard in my arms with the force of a kick. "What, with a boy?" she taunts me. Which instantly pisses me off. The sweet, unexpected treat of Jeremy's compliment-had he been flirting with me?-turns bad. It's a gold ring I've plucked from the sand at the edge of the Florida shore, only to realize it's staining my finger green. Nell's ruined everything, in less than two minutes.
    "Forget it," she finally says. "Whatever. I was fifteen once, too. Before the Civil War."
    And like that, she's not mad anymore. She's heading back into the studio, and I'm following her, and she's talk ing like it's business as usual. "Got so much going on, with the show..." she rattles. But that's Nell. She's really one of those type-A personalities, so high-strung that if she were a dog, she'd be one of those little twerpy things that bark at ear-splitting decibels and just don't know when to shut up.
    She rushes to her desk, and I stare at her in her plaid slacks and her white blouse with the big open collar, chunky jade necklace at her throat. She's just so incredibly polished. There's nothing about her that looks messy-I can't imagine her ever making a mistake, like dating the wrong guy or taking a wrong turn in traffic or even so much as leaving her umbrella behind in a movie theater. She looks like a perfect piece of Ming Dynasty pottery behind glass. Don't touch, don't touch, don't get your grimy little hands all over it.
    Her photography studio's in an old brick building, one of those historic downtown sites with so much age that as I make my way inside, I don't feel like my sneakers are flopping against wooden boards, but against decades. The coolest part of Nell's studio is the way she always slaps her newest stuff all over the walls. Last summer, the place was full of brides, the white froth of their meringue-style gowns flowing everywhere. September, it was animals-plain old house cats and mixed-breed mutts caught in such perfect moments, their personalities zinging like lightning bolts across their faces, you'd think they were human. ("People are insane about their pets," Nell had grumbled with a shrug when I'd tried to compliment her shots.)
    Today, the studio is full of framed black