Getting Somewhere Read Online Free

well as anyone. In fact, he’d be pissed as hell if he thought she had something for another guy. But he likes to pretend that she has some desire for him, that she doesn’t do it just because she has to. Weird how a guy like Tyson who acts so tough, so street, can pretend a girl cares about him, has to believe it to keep feeling like the world is turning just for him. Maybe she does love him, just a little. Maybe him wanting her to is enough, makes it real. Sarah herself isn’t all that attached to reality anyway. It’s no revolution on the street. It’s all just a made-up world—there, here, probably everywhere.
    The bed is real though. She presses her body down, tries to feel her weight sinking in, as if wanting to be absorbed. She imagines dirty imprints on the sheets from the bottom of her feet and stretches her legs out so that just her heels are resting on the mattress. It was just last night that she took a shower at the detention center, she realizes. She only feels dirty because that’s what it feels like to be her in a place like this.
    She can hear little sounds on the other side of the walls, house sounds, or maybe the other girls moving around, getting into their own beds. Strange to feel lonely, wonder what is going on in the other rooms, if that Jenna ever smiles, if Cassie ever talks, how Lauren is going to feel when her makeup runs out and the roots of her natural hair color start to show. Now, she’s like an antenna or one of those dishes, rotating to pick up all the signals all across the universe, messages from distant planets. She’d probably just pick up commercials, advertisements for Coke or Nike or a Ford Expedition that she could never buy. That would be just her luck; satellite junk food.
    Sarah starts to giggle and snuggles down deeper in the bed, pulls the blanket high under her chin. Her internal clock is all messed up. Now she’s all jittery when she was ready to relax just a minute ago. It’s too dark. She thinks about getting up to turn the light back on. She opens her eyes wide to help them get used to the dark faster. She used to do that to Shannon, scare the shit out of her by pretending to stare off into space, acting like she could see shit there that nobody else could see. The thought of Shannon makes her shake harder.
    He was looking at both of them but picked Shannon. How many times has she gone over that scene in her head? That girl just never had the sense to scoot if things got too rough. That’s what everybody said, and Sarah wants to believe it, has to believe it had to be Shannon and couldn’t have been anyone else. Sarah can’t always remember the face, and yet for some reason, right now she can see her perfectly, but only after, not before. She can see exactly how her skull looked, bashed in on one side, the blood. Sarah had never seen her naked before, didn’t realize how tiny she was under her layers of clothes. Shannon was always cold, shivered a lot even in the summer, any little breeze or the shadow of the dark side of the street.
    Sarah doesn’t know why she’s thinking about Shannon, is mad at herself because of it. Shannon is the side of things she doesn’t look at. It made her reckless, after, on the street at all hours by herself, desperate to end the thought of it however she could. Moving, moving to protect the secret place in her mind that she’d always pretended wasn’t there, a thought stash that made her see a kitchen table with a bright light above it, hear the humming of the refrigerator, the running of water in the sink, the television talking to nobody in another room. She had to get away, got away, and now she’s away but she doesn’t know where away is.
    She sees Ty now with Shannon, that day the two of them came up the stairs with his arm draped over her shoulder, a big grin on his face, saying, “Look what I found huddled by the dryer vents over on