Alyzon Whitestarr Read Online Free

kitchen table when I went in, incredibly tall, frighteningly skinny, with collarbones that stuck out far enough to stack books on. “Brilliant,” she was saying. “Such a wonderfully moody new series …” She glanced up from the sheet of slides as I entered and gave me the faintly puzzled look everyone gave me, as if wondering what I was there for.
    I wondered that, too.
    “Hi, Rhona,” I said, blinking a bit at her skintight pink dress and turban, thinking that if I had been a buyer, I wouldn’t have listened to a word she said about art. The only good thing about Rhona was her continued faith in Mum, which Mum treated as if it were a sort of slow wasting illness that she would probably die from someday.
    “That’s a stunning ensemble,” Rhona told Mirandah, who entered wearing purple boots, purple tights, and a violet tie-dyed petticoat with ragged lace. She looked at me. “You ought to wear a bit of color once in a while, Alyzon. It would brighten you up.”
    I ate a tomato, cheerfully thinking there was definitely hope for me if Rhona disliked how I looked. A picture ofHarlen Sanderson crept into my mind and I felt my face grow hot. I felt Harlen was way out of my league in the human attraction stakes. But that didn’t stop me from daydreaming.
    Mum came into the room. No, strike that. Mum
glided
into the room wearing a long floating shift of green chiffon over black leggings. She had caught her hair up in a jeweled comb, but red curls were spilling artistically in all directions.
    “Daaarling,” Rhona shrilled, rising and holding her arms open wide. Da and I grinned at one another covertly as Mum went forward and allowed herself to be enfolded in long, thin, pink arms. It looked like some sort of carnivorous stick insect consuming a butterfly. “You look marvelous, Zambia.”
    “That’s very pink, Rhona,” Mum said. Luke started to fuss so she took him in her arms and rearranged her clothes to feed him. Rhona averted her eyes. She thought artists had no business breeding. Their work ought to be progeny enough, she had told Mum the previous year when she learned of the new pregnancy, thirteen years after the last. Then she had hinted about abortion.
    “Oh no,” Mum had said, blissfully dismissive. “But this will be the last. I sense it.”
    “I hope you sense yourself using contraception in the future.” Rhona had been shattered enough to be slightly acerbic, but it was wasted on Mum.
    “This one is needed in the world,” Mum had said dreamily.
    “Serenity. So much black,” Rhona said now, as Serenity came in.
    “Sybl,”
Serenity corrected her coldly.
    We all trooped out to wrap and pack the paintings, leaving Mum in the kitchen feeding Luke. Rhona came along behind us, poking holes in the lawn with her stiletto heels.
    “She should use professional movers,” Rhona said, as usual.
    “We can’t afford it,” Da said, also as usual.
    It took almost an hour and there were just a couple of smaller paintings left to be fitted in when Mum asked me to take Luke and put him in his car seat in Rhona’s hatchback. It was just starting to rain as I came out carrying him. I noticed the back of the van was open and went round to see if the rain was getting in.
    That’s when it happened. Our cat, a monstrously overweight gray tabby called Wombat, jumped from the roof of the house onto the uplifted door of the van. It was designed to stay open, but once it started to close, it fell like a guillotine.
    I felt the rush of air, and some instinct made me step forward rather than back, so the door smashed down on my forehead with all the force of a falling piano—instead of on Luke’s. A rocket exploded with incredible, painful intensity inside my skull, and all the strength went out of my knees.
    “Luke,” I whispered fearfully as the darkness ate me.

“Alyzon?” Someone shouted my name so loudly that it hurt. And I could smell roses so strongly it was as if someone had shoved them up my nose.