Precious Read Online Free Page B

Coca-Cola. “You know what to do if anyone calls?” Eva asks, leaning against the counter. “If Dad calls on break?
Especially
if Dad calls. I’m indisposed. Say it.”
    “I’m indisposed,” Sissy says.
    “Not you. Me. I’m indisposed. I’m counting on you not to tattle. Tattletales get their just due.” She hands Sissy the half-finished glass and watches as Sissy drinks the soda and holds it in her mouth for a moment, leaving it to fizzle.
    “I already told you I won’t,” Sissy says finally.
    “Good. I’m sorry for what I did before.”
    “Do you really mean that, or do you just not want me to tell?”
    “I mean it.”
    “Okay.”
    “How much do you love me, kid?”
    “Tons,” Sissy says. “I love you tons.”
    “You always say that,” Eva tells her. She crosses her arms. “You’re too easy.”
    Sissy sips her soda. “Eva?”
    “What?”
    “Why didn’t Dad fill the pool?”
    “Because he’s an asshole, that’s why.”
    “Eva?”
    “What?”
    “Did Mom go where Vicki went?”
    Eva squats down, to eye level. “No,” she says plainly. “Mom didn’t go where Vicki went.”
    “Maybe Mom was kidnapped.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. Why do you conflate things?”
    Sissy looks at her strangely. “Maybe,” Sissy says finally, “Mom was kidnapped and that’s why she hasn’t called.”
    “You’ve got it all wrong,” Eva says, impatient to be on her way, and, at the mention of their mother, annoyed again. “Mom’s probably still in Italy with Dr. Finley like she was when she wrote to us. That’s the truth, Sissy. Mom is gone and she isn’t coming back, so you might as well just forget about her.”
    Sissy follows her sister down the hall. Eva picks up her purse from the living room chair and opens it. She stands in front of the mirror and applies a coat of orange lip gloss.
    “Eva?” Sissy lingers in the doorway.
    “Jesus Christ,
what
?” She smacks her lips together.
    “Do you ever get lonely?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “You don’t?”
    Eva primps her hair. Her chest constricts again, though this time she ignores it. “Everyone gets lonely, I guess.”
    “What do you do when you are, then?”
    Eva checks the clock—just about three, just about the time he’ll finish—and takes her keys from her purse. “I don’t know,” she says, heading out the door. “I just pretend I’m not.”
    Sissy does conflate everything; it’s a mark of her character and disposition, one that she will not rid herself of in all her lifetime. Gypsies andbirds and ghosts, her mother and Vicki. What she cannot fully understand becomes a mass of threaded contradictions within her, dancing around in her mind until they form a lover’s knot.
    After Eva leaves, the day grows as long as a shadow. By four the house will begin to feel ominous. In the kitchen, the basement door will become a gateway to a place filled with cobwebby terror, unspeakable dread. In the living room, Sissy will be certain someone lurks just outside the window: a mystery man, a murderer. Upstairs, the shuttered closet in Sissy’s room will suddenly hold too many secrets; each slat will cause her worry. She will find refuge in Eva’s room, the room that is, according to the red-lettered sign on the door, STRICTLY OFF-LIMITS! On Eva’s walls there hang posters of exotic places—Italy, Spain, France— Eva has always wanted to travel to, though she laments frequently that she’ll never get away from this town and from these people, though what people she refers to exactly is mostly anyone’s guess. Clothes cover the carpet, piles of books litter the bureau. The room smells of cinnamon and lemon candles. Eva’s jewelry box stands always open. Black and white with two silver clasps on each side, the box holds a dancer, a ballerina dressed in a white tutu and frozen on pointed toes. Sissy will wind the back of the box and listen, absorbed, as the ballerina turns in circles.
    She stays away from the open window in