Girl Defective Read Online Free Page A

familiar, made me think, I bet they did more than just hang out.
    Evil Eve gave Dad a card. “Call me if anything comesto you.” And then she walked out slowly. Before Gully or I could say anything, Dad turned the key on the till. It made a colossal noise as it spat out the end-of-day strip.
    I snatched up her card. “Was she your girlfriend?”
    Dad gave me an enigmatic smile.
    â€œShe likes you,” I said.
    â€œAffirmative,” Gully chimed in. “She was leaning into you. That’s a tell.”
    Gully was big on tells. His most noted body language giveaways included shifty eyes; hands touching face, throat, mouth; fingers tugging on earlobes; scratching neck; excised pronouns; deployment of monotone; delayed physical manifestations of emotion; and adjunct random observations.
    â€œGet away,” Dad grumbled. “Go fix dinner.”
    He shooed us out but not before putting on the Sonics, and that was a tell too. Their bam-bam garage punk being exactly what you would play if you didn’t want to think, if your insides were jumping and your synapses were firing all over the place. I went upstairs shaking off the shiver that was my tell. Things were changing. Dad crushing on a cop? Life was about to get another layer.

Memo #1
    Memo from Agent Seagull Martin
    Date: Saturday, November 29
    Agent: Seagull Martin
    Address: 34 Blessington St., St. Kilda, upstairs
    POINT THE FIRST:
    On Thursday, November 27, at approximately 0400 hours an unknown vandal—code name Bricker—threw a brick through the window of esteemed record shop Bill’s Wishing Well, 34 Blessington St., St. Kilda (est. 1999).
    POINT THE SECOND:
    Bricks were also thrown through the windows of Ada’s Cakes and Bernard Levon, Tax Accountant.
    POINT THE THIRD:
    Asif Patel, proprietor, 7-Eleven, and Ernst Vella, street poet and luminary, both observed a white Jeep doing “blocks.”
    POSSIBLY RELATED FROM "PORT PHILLIP LEADER" NEWSPAPER:
    â€“ Two women egged on Vale St.
    â€“ Police concern over increase in muck-up day antics
    â€“ Eli Wallace, 78, camping outside the Paradise Theater, protesting its imminent demolition
    PROFILE
    The Bricker is under twenty—most likely male and in a high socioeconomic bracket. He has sociopathic tendencies and a nihilistic, destructive attitude. He is possibly a high school graduate or friends of a high school graduate.
    ACTION
    Crime scene dusted.
    Contact council for list of Jeeps registered to local area.
    Research CCTV unit for shop (video).
    Info-share with SKPD via Constable Eve Brennan.

FAMILY STICKS TOGETHER
    T HIS IS HOW IT was with Dad: I knew he loved me, but Gully was the true star of his heart. Sometimes I’d see Dad look at my brother and feel the acid tang of jealousy in the back of my mouth. I’d flash on Gully at four saying, “I’m a boy and Dad’s a boy, but Sky is a girl .” And I’d feel cursed and isolated and defective.
    Gully’s weirdness had always been there. I’d lost count of the times he’d come home from school with a “retard” sign stuck to the back of his jumper. Last year Derek Digby, the scourge of grade six, had a mission to make Gully crack. Because Gully refused to. Despite head flushings, stolen lunches, and sucker punches, Gully just acted like Derek was a bump in the rug he had to step over. One day Gully came home with a spectacular bruise on his cheek. It was my job to walk Gully to and from school. The one day I didn’t was the day they got him. I could tell by his uneven footfall that something was wrong. Dad was in the kitchen making spaghetti. When he saw Gully’s face, he dropped the pot. The water scalded his bare feet, but he didn’teven register this because all his feeling had gone to my brother.
    That night Gully wrote his first memo. He documented everything he remembered about the attack:
    POINT THE FIRST: The attackers had calamari breath.
    POINT THE