Livvie Owen Lived Here Read Online Free Page B

girl and they would help me in a little while. Sometimes I bounced Lanie on my knee with Simon’s help, and sometimes Karen let me hold her in the rocking chair, but mostly she was a change in my life that I just didn’t feel ready for.
    Around the time Lanie was born, I pulled out such a big chunk of my hair that my scalp bled. My parents were horrified. They rushed me to the hospital, like there was anything the hospital could do about a stupid missing chunk of hair. For a while after that, they made me keep my hair cut short. It was only lately they started letting me grow it out again, long like Natasha’s, only too thick and not as pretty.
    But when Lanie was one year and five monthsold, something changed in our relationship. Around that time, she started speaking a language I could sort of understand, all about the colors and the motions of things. Her speech was visible. I could see the words she said because they made so much sense to me. It surprised me to learn that my family couldn’t understand her. Her words were like pictures painted on the air. We spent all our time together.
    I wasn’t sure exactly when our friendship started to fade. Maybe when she said her first sentence that made sense to our parents. Maybe when Natasha started to understand her. And then there was the matter of the neighbor girl in one of the places we lived. The neighbor girl was my age, but she acted different. And Lanie liked her better.
    By the time Lanie began speaking in clear, complete sentences to the people around her, she had stopped making sense to me. And it was as if she had forgotten I had ever made any sense to her.
    â€œTry not to fall off any more chairs,” Lanie said nastily as I climbed out of the car at my school. I stuck my tongue out at her and slammed the car door. Even though she thought she was too old for things like that, I still saw her stick her tongue out as the car pulled away. She would be riding with my father as far as Neighbor’s city limits, where her science and mathematics middle school was located.Her stupid Bentley mouse had helped her win a scholarship last year.
    I stayed exactly where Simon left me until I saw Natasha pull up on her bike. Locking it to the rack, she slung an arm through mine the way we always did. We strolled through the courtyard, me hopping when necessary, stepping over book bags students had dropped in their rush to play horseshoes and four square and to huddle in groups to talk. I didn’t like the way they looked at me as I passed—a fake smile here, a nervous look there. The problem was, they were always looking. I stuck my hands in my pockets and worried the lining of my sweater until the threads came loose in my fingertips. I clenched and unclenched my joints, starting with my shoulders. Rolled my head around in a circle on my neck. Hummed a little to myself, the same note over and over.
    â€œWhy so stressed today?” Natasha asked as we approached my classroom door.
    â€œStupid Lanie,” I replied. “She’s got Livvie all upset.”
    â€œShe doesn’t mean anything,” Natasha answered. “She’s eleven. That’s why she’s so mean. That’s what eleven-year-olds do.”
    â€œYou weren’t mean when you were eleven,” I pointed out.
    â€œI was to Lanie,” Natasha confided. “A million years ago, you know.”
    â€œUh-uh, it was not a million years ago, it was five.”
    Tash smiled. “I know. It just
feels
like a million.” With a sympathetic wave for my substitute teacher, she left me at the classroom door.
    Mrs. Paxton was one of those substitutes you’d rather they would substitute for somebody else. Today was her fourth day and she was finally confident enough to smile, the kind with too much lipstick all around it, instead of scrutinizing me like I was about to attack her. Something about her behavior made me think my reputation preceded me, but she