Orphea Proud Read Online Free Page B

that time she didn’t come back.… So, Lissa had to be the good one. But don’t get me wrong—she was still her own person. She just managed to say yes to her parents about everything while doing precisely what she wanted to at the same time. She had a snake tattooed on her ankle that they never even knew about. I don’t know how she hid it; she must have worn socks at the lake when she went swimming. When she got the tattoo, I went with her. The guy at the tattoo parlor asked for ID and Lissa gave them an old one that had belonged to Annie. Somehow it worked.
    In high school, Lissa’s paintings changed. She got into flowers, massive, fleshy flowers in psychedelic colors. A three-foot-high sunflower of hers won first place in the school art competition. The art teacher told Lissa that the painting was like Van Gogh. Lissa smiled politely when she heard that, but she wasn’t pleased.
    “I want to be like Georgia O’Keeffe,” she said. “Lascivious.” No mention of Picasso. I’ll never forget a rose that she did—huge and velvety. But my favorite will always be the leaf she painted for me when we were twelve.

    Let me take a breath.
    After she peeled away in the van, I kept myself barricaded inside. I lost track of time. Three hours might have passed. I stayed huddled on the floor in front of my dresser, hunkered down for the next attack. I was scared to go downstairs. I didn’t know what to do. Then the phone rang. I held my breath. I was sure it was Lissa on the line. She would have been worried about me; probably afraid that Rupert had killed me. Ruby had tried to protect me. Maybe if she answered she’d call me to the phone. But she didn’t.
    After that, silence. Or rather what I heard was a lack of noise, as if I were in the center of a vacuum. I hugged my knees and buried my head. The blood I’d tasted earlier had been coming from the side of my eye.When Rupert had struck me, I’d been cut somehow, maybe by his wedding ring.
    I wanted Nadine so much in that moment. I wanted her to pick up my whole room with me in it and toss it out of the window onto a gliding cloud that would take me and Lissa straight to a different world where it was no big deal for girls to French kiss. A world where people would let each other be who they are and mind their own business and concentrate on doing kind deeds or making poems and paintings or finding a cure for brain hemorrhages.
    Finally, I stood up and began pushing the furniture away from my door. My mouth was dry as cotton and my legs were shaking. I had to call Lissa. One of the many weird features of life with Rupert and Ruby was that there was no phone above the first floor. And I wasn’t permitted a cell phone. If I couldn’t get to the phone downstairs, I decided, I’d go to Lissa’s house instead. If Rupert tried to stop me, I’d fight my way out.
    I picked up a shoe. If Rupert made a move to touch me again, I vowed to whack him in his teeth. That man loved his teeth. I pushed the bed away and cracked the door open. Rupert and Ruby were climbing the stairs.
    “Come out, Orphea,” my brother said. He sounded more grim than angry. He even sounded a little sorry.
    “Don’t be afraid,” said Ruby. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
    “You’d better not. I’ll call the police!”
    Rupert pushed the door open the rest of the way. They stood facing me.
    “Move!” I tried to brush past them.
    Rupert stopped me. “Don’t go to Lissa’s.”
    “I’ll go where I please. Get out of my way.”
    “We have something to tell you,” Ruby said timidly. She peered at my face. “Your poor eye …”
    “Yeah! And who did that?”
    Rupert cleared his throat. “I lost my temper.”
    “I’ll say.”
    Ruby stepped closer. “Lissa’s father just phoned.”
    “I hope she told him what Rupert did.”
    “I don’t think so. You see, something bad happened.”
    “What could be worse than being beat almost senseless by your own brother?”
    “Shut up and