Swim to Me Read Online Free Page B

driving.
    â€œThat’s me,” said Delores.
    â€œC’mon then, let’s go.”
    The girl behind the wheel was named Molly Pouncey. She was seventeen, just eleven months older than Delores. She had long blonde hair, bluish green eyes, with no whites showing, and there was a tiny crook in her thin, long nose. Molly Pouncey had come from Philadelphia only six months earlier. She swallowed her
l
’s, so that “please” came out “plgease” and “delicious” as “deglicious.” When she said to Delores: “You’ll love the girls, and the springs. The water is so unbelievably blue and clear, you don’t even need goggles,” it sounded to Delores as if she were talking underwater.
    They drove by the swamps and marshes that had captivatedDelores a little more than two years earlier. They passed a church with a marquee outside. BY SORROW OF THE HEART, THE SPIRIT IS BROKEN , it said in high, bold letters. Had something changed, or, back then, had she not noticed the fried-chicken joints and Jesus billboards that lined the road?
    â€œThe food is out of sight,” continued Molly. “Great pizza, corn dogs. We get to eat whatever we want.”
    Molly talked as if Delores was already one of them. Delores had read in
Teen Girl
that appearance was a matter of self-esteem. “When you feel insecure, put a smile on your face and a bounce in your voice, and no one will be able to tell,” it said. “After a while, even you will begin to believe that the day’s getting brighter.”
Teen Girl
had never let her down; it certainly wouldn’t now.
    Delores and her best friend, Ellen Frailey, used to spend hours reading
Teen Girl.
Once, they sat in the sun for two hours with wax paper on their arms after reading:
Give yourself a suntan tattoo. Cut out a small diamond or flower shape and paste it on your shoulder while you sunbathe. Small beauty spots are best. Avoid large shapes or complicated designs—you don’t want to look like a sailor. Teen Girl
was where Delores learned that “popular people are enthusiastic.” According to her score on the “Are You an Extrovert or an Introvert?” quiz, she was somewhere in between, with a tendency toward “keeping to herself and shying away from others.” By now,
Teen Girl
had become Delores’s personal guidebook. She turned to it for advice on how to look and act like other girls her age.
    Because she had teeth that stuck out (“braces are a luxury for people like us,” her mother had said), Delores normally kept her lips together and smiled in the shape of a canoe. But as Molly rattled on about the routines and about the hot room where the girls went to warm up after swimming, Delores flashed the most luminous, toothy grin she could muster. “Gosh, that sounds so exciting,” shesaid. “I can hardly wait to get there.” Molly gave her a sidelong look: “You look like that actress from
Gigi
that my mother’s always going on about,” she said. “Oh, you know, the French one.”
    â€œWell, I have a little French in me,” said Delores. “From my mother.” It wasn’t a lie exactly. She had, after all, grown up on liver.
    Delores studied Molly’s profile: a thin, white scar ran down the side of her neck. She wanted to ask Molly if she’d been stabbed and also how she got the money to come from Philadelphia, but she didn’t think it was appropriate to ask those kinds of questions so soon after meeting her. Molly, it appeared, did not have the same problem. “How does a girl from New York City make her way down to this part of Florida?” she asked in her gluggy accent. “Did you run away from home?” “Oh no,” answered Delores. “My parents—they’re in the entertainment business—have always encouraged me to do my own thing.”
    â€œAre they famous?”
    â€œIs who