Poison Shy Read Online Free Page B
Author: Stacey Madden
pinched shut and her mouth was wide open: an ecstatic scream, frozen in silence. The full moon shone directly over her head like a halo turned on its side. It was one photo among hundreds overlapping on the wall. I plucked it off and stuffed it in the back pocket of my uniform.
There was a heap of laundry on the floor, and another on the unmade bed. Some of the clothes looked like they could have been Darcyâs, but it was hard to tell. On a small desk in the corner was a laptop, and above that, a vintage
Playboy
calendar. Octoberâs playmate was a petite brunette in cut-off jean shorts, stretched out topless on a bale of hay.
I looked at what Melanie had written on some of the dates.
October second:
Jillâs 21
st
b-day
October fifteenth:
American Lit essay due
October thirty-first:
Halloween, bitches!
The toilet flushed. I scrambled back into the hallway. Bill emerged from the bathroom. I caught a throat-clenching whiff of shit mixed with air freshener.
âJesus,â Bill said, fanning the air with his hand. âYou think the bugs are already dead?â He laughed in a fit of wheezes. His self-deprecating jolliness made the stench more bearable, and I laughed along with him.
We put on our masks and sprayed the living room and kitchen before moving on to the bedrooms. Bill went straight for Melanieâs room, so I got stuck with Darcyâs. Wrestling his multi-stained futon into the plastic case was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. The side of my hand touched a stain that still felt wet.
I blocked it out and thought about Melanie. I wondered how old she was and where sheâd grown up. Was she an only child like me? Were her parents alive? Did she have any bad habits or outrageous childhood dreams? I thought about taking her out to dinner, bombarding her with questions. Spotting constellations in her freckles. Would it be considered inappropriate to ask her out on a date?
My father had met my mother while rewiring her parentsâ two-bedroom home in London, Ontario. He was twenty-five at the time, she eighteen. According to the story I was told as a child, my father was down on his hands and knees in the upstairs hallway, examining a faulty outlet, when my mother came out of her bedroom in her nightgown without her glasses on. She was near-blind without them. On her way to the bathroom, she stumbled over my father and nearly broke her back. She said she fell in love with him in that instant, but I know thatâs just a simplification of things, the way the stories of our lives get pared down over time into these condensed and delusive versions of the truth.
Did the story of my parentsâ meeting influence my desire for Melanie in any way? Itâs possible. If so it was unconscious. Itâs funny how our parents can manoeuvre us into disastrous scenarios without even trying â sometimes without even being alive.
Iâm not so naïve as to think my parents didnât have problems before I grew old enough to start noticing them. My mother was a religious fanatic and my father was a hedonistic drunk. Problems were inevitable. The sad thing is that these kinds of inexplicable unions are all too common, born of the clichéd notion that opposites attract. Maybe they do, but truisms are rarely conducive to happiness.
There was no watershed moment at which our family orb shattered into bits. It was more like a gradual splintering, each argument adding new chips and cracks with the force of a foot stomp.
The night of my tenth birthday stands out as one of the more damaging blows. My father hadnât been home for five consecutive days. I was afraid to ask my mother where he was because I didnât want my question to seem like a reminder or an accusation. She was doing a good job of pretending everything was normal, so I just went along with it.
I was in my bedroom playing video games when she came and stood in the doorway.
âDo you want me to
There was a heap of laundry on the floor, and another on the unmade bed. Some of the clothes looked like they could have been Darcyâs, but it was hard to tell. On a small desk in the corner was a laptop, and above that, a vintage
Playboy
calendar. Octoberâs playmate was a petite brunette in cut-off jean shorts, stretched out topless on a bale of hay.
I looked at what Melanie had written on some of the dates.
October second:
Jillâs 21
st
b-day
October fifteenth:
American Lit essay due
October thirty-first:
Halloween, bitches!
The toilet flushed. I scrambled back into the hallway. Bill emerged from the bathroom. I caught a throat-clenching whiff of shit mixed with air freshener.
âJesus,â Bill said, fanning the air with his hand. âYou think the bugs are already dead?â He laughed in a fit of wheezes. His self-deprecating jolliness made the stench more bearable, and I laughed along with him.
We put on our masks and sprayed the living room and kitchen before moving on to the bedrooms. Bill went straight for Melanieâs room, so I got stuck with Darcyâs. Wrestling his multi-stained futon into the plastic case was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. The side of my hand touched a stain that still felt wet.
I blocked it out and thought about Melanie. I wondered how old she was and where sheâd grown up. Was she an only child like me? Were her parents alive? Did she have any bad habits or outrageous childhood dreams? I thought about taking her out to dinner, bombarding her with questions. Spotting constellations in her freckles. Would it be considered inappropriate to ask her out on a date?
My father had met my mother while rewiring her parentsâ two-bedroom home in London, Ontario. He was twenty-five at the time, she eighteen. According to the story I was told as a child, my father was down on his hands and knees in the upstairs hallway, examining a faulty outlet, when my mother came out of her bedroom in her nightgown without her glasses on. She was near-blind without them. On her way to the bathroom, she stumbled over my father and nearly broke her back. She said she fell in love with him in that instant, but I know thatâs just a simplification of things, the way the stories of our lives get pared down over time into these condensed and delusive versions of the truth.
Did the story of my parentsâ meeting influence my desire for Melanie in any way? Itâs possible. If so it was unconscious. Itâs funny how our parents can manoeuvre us into disastrous scenarios without even trying â sometimes without even being alive.
Iâm not so naïve as to think my parents didnât have problems before I grew old enough to start noticing them. My mother was a religious fanatic and my father was a hedonistic drunk. Problems were inevitable. The sad thing is that these kinds of inexplicable unions are all too common, born of the clichéd notion that opposites attract. Maybe they do, but truisms are rarely conducive to happiness.
There was no watershed moment at which our family orb shattered into bits. It was more like a gradual splintering, each argument adding new chips and cracks with the force of a foot stomp.
The night of my tenth birthday stands out as one of the more damaging blows. My father hadnât been home for five consecutive days. I was afraid to ask my mother where he was because I didnât want my question to seem like a reminder or an accusation. She was doing a good job of pretending everything was normal, so I just went along with it.
I was in my bedroom playing video games when she came and stood in the doorway.
âDo you want me to
Readers choose
Darrell Maloney
Lilian Harry
Jonathan Moeller
Elizabeth Darvill
Vivian Lux
Elizabeth Vaughan
Kate Kerrigan
David Leavitt
Vivian Vande Velde
Hanna Jameson