All We Had Read Online Free Page B

she’d hold my face and study my lips.
    â€œYup, you got my mouth. And let me see those eyes.” I’d raise my eyebrows in an effort not to blink. “Yup,” she’d say, and drop my face. “When you get older we are going to look just like sisters.”
    But I could never see it. She and I were opposites. I had short,coarse hair; hers was long and silky. Her figure was curvaceous and feminine, mine was lean and hard. I wore jeans with high-tops and she wore hers with heels. But in the dismal light of that bathroom, as we looked at each other in the mirror, I saw a sadness in our eyes and a weariness around our lips that we shared.
    We heard pounding at the door.
    â€œWhat the hell is going on in there?” a woman yelled.
    â€œJust a minute.” I tried to sound normal. I hurriedly wiped the blood off the floor.
    â€œI’m going to call the police if you don’t open up,” the voice outside shouted.
    When we opened the door, a squat woman in a pleated skirt and wide-brimmed hat stood in front of us, fist raised mid-knock. With purse in hand, she clutched a small boy in front of her. He was wearing a Cub Scout uniform—kneesocks, suspenders, shorts, and a beanie.
    â€œThere’s a line out here, you know!” the lady scolded, even though there wasn’t.
    I held my mother upright and guided her out the door.
    â€œTrash,” the woman muttered as she steered the boy past us.
    â€œBitch,” I muttered back.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Anger
    O n the outskirts of Chicago the miles of pitch-black highway divided and strip malls appeared on both sides. Neon signs streaked by like finger paints smeared on walls. A dazzle of reflections flew off the hood of the car. And as quickly as the carnival of color erupted, it faded and the world outside my window was cast again in shades of black and gray.
    We crossed over Indiana through miles of brittle desolate earth. Every day when the sun went down it melted into a blazing pool of orange. It shimmered on the horizon and when it finally slipped away, a scar of bluish purple bruised the earth for hours. And the heat lingered on.
    We spent a night behind a supermarket and in the morning, a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts was just sitting on the ground in front of us as if a fairy had left them there. The sun had even warmed them up.
    By the time we reached Pennsylvania we’d been on the road for almost seven days. And all the things my mother usually did—tapping the steering wheel with her thumbs when sheliked a song, biting her bottom lip when she wasn’t smoking—suddenly annoyed me. We tried playing Sister Sledge again, but the original effect of “We Are Family” had reversed itself. Nowthe last thing we wanted to be was related. On top of that, something in the car smelled. We sniffed around but never found the source. We rolled the windows up and down—it was unpredictable, which made it worse. It could stink like blue cheese or baby vomit. When we finally entered New York State it smelled like both.
    By ten p.m. we were hungry and tired and hot. We’d finished the last of our Pop-Tarts hours before. We needed air-conditioning and food.
    A truck whizzed by towing a blinking traffic arrow. For twenty miles it was all we saw. The deserted highway went on and on forever. The posts on the guardrail whooshed as we passed them. A stone caught in our tire tick-tick-ticked against the pavement. I felt as if we were standing still and the landscape out my window was merely scrolling by.
    â€œLook!” my mother said, pointing out the window. A glowing sign emerged from the darkness like a pool of water in the desert. gas, food, lodging ,it read, so we took the exit.
    A heavyset, bucktoothed, chinless girl sat in the toll booth at the bottom of the ramp.
    â€œTwo fifty,” she said, too busy reading People magazineto look at us. With her weight on one hip, she stuck her hand out and chomped on her gum.