Pretty Read Online Free Page A

you look. She told me the paint was faded because he was a surfer.
    The downtown L.A. skyline looks like Brigadoon in the mist—a cluster of tall, fuzzy-edged buildings floating out of a low-slung sprawl of lights that stretches forever. Walking up the street, I pass by Chandra, our ghetto princess, the one who talked me into going to beauty school. Chandra just finished getting her cosmetology license, which, in the voc-rehab system, is like being premed in college—it means you really have a future. But tonight Chandra sits in the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s white Lincoln Continental and cries, her hands in front of her face, her two-inch-long acrylics stretching to her hairline. It gives me a jolt to see her like that. She’s a fighter, not a crier. I pull my jacket around me against the wet chill of the night and look away.
    I throw my fast-food wrappers out in someone else’s trash can before walking around back and climbing the few stairs up to the kitchen entrance. I opted for fries and a milk shake after Jake stood me up and left me hovering alone at the edges of an AA meeting where everyone was too bright and too loud and too pretty. I slipped out before the end and kind of felt like crying with frustration but instead stuffed my face in the parking lot of the Fatburger next door.
    It’s not his fault, really, that he rarely manages to show up for our dates. Jake lives in the men’s house next door. He qualifies for housing in a dual-diagnosis facility because he was honorably discharged from the Marines due to a diagnosis of schizophrenia. His particular flavor of schizo is characterized by paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations, neither of which was eased by his fondness for exotic psychedelics. By the time we met in a drug treatment center, before we both graduated and transferred to Serenity, Jake introduced himself as Jesus and really believed it until they got his meds straight. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Jesus, but I know he’s there, trembling underneath Jake’s skin, waiting for life to squeeze Jake too tight so he can emerge again. So I try not to squeeze. I give Jake a lot of room.
    Why would I date a guy who periodically thinks he’s the Messiah and more frequently has an audible commentary going in his head? You’d have to meet him to get it. He has the most remarkable eyes, and by that I mean not the color or the shape or anything but how they see things. And besides, we who have been branded and filed away into the state mental health system, we have to stick together. Who else will have us?
    My roommate, Violet, sits out on the back porch. She sits folded into the seat of one of the wire chairs with her knees tucked under her chin. The end of her cigarette glows with each furious drag. Violet is a goth girl with a baroque sense of style when she has the energy, but tonight she is wan and wearing black sweatpants so old they’re gray. She tugs her sleeves down to cover her fingertips so only her cigarette emerges.
    â€œHey,” I say.
    â€œHey. How was the meeting?”
    â€œJesus didn’t show.”
    â€œJesus stood you up again ?”
    â€œHe has issues. I try not to get too attached. How was your night, Mistress of the Dark?”
    She immediately goes listless and flat. “Fine.”
    Violet suffers from major depressive disorder in conjunction with a major suicidal ideation and a major fiending for methamphetamine. She turns inward, to her cigarette. I stand in the doorway for a minute. I wonder if there were constant awkward pauses before I got sober or if awkward pauses are one of the many new delights of sobriety. I can’t remember. Violet can be jumpy, so when I go in I hold the screen door to make sure it doesn’t slam.
    Four of the girls are gathered around the old TV set in the living room. A couple of bowls sit on the coffee table smeared with the milky remnants of frozen yogurt. I