Wink Poppy Midnight Read Online Free

soup for a bunch of Orphans. You have to start with onions, and celery, and carrots. You cut them up and toss them in and cook them down. Everything that comes after this is just other. Stories are that way too.
    I told the Hero about the Orphans, and
The Thing in the Deep.
    I liked his eyes.

P OPPY FOLLOWED ME through my new house, across the creaking hardwood floor, around jumbled-up furniture, under spiderwebs, over boxes, up the stairs, hands sliding over the smooth dark wood of the banister, down the narrow, dark hallway, to the high-ceilinged bedroom that I’d taken as my own, last door on the left.
    There weren’t sheets on the bed, but the frame and mattress were up. I stepped over two boxes and then moved around the room and opened all the windows. All four had faded yellow curtains that smelled like dust.
    I went back to the door and closed it. Dad wouldn’t bother me if my door was closed. He respected privacy. Privacy was like gold to him, as in worth-its-weight. He wanted it, and so he gave it to others freely and without question.
    I had to push the door shut the last few inches, so it would latch. This house seemed to be leaning on its side, like an old woman with one hand on her hip, and it made everything off kilter. Later on, I would come to like it. Later on I would hear the creaks and moans and feel welcome, and comforted,like the house was speaking to me in its own gasping, rickety voice. I would be able to tell where Dad was, down to which corner of the room, just by the series of pops and shudders and squeaks that echoed down to me like the refrain of a song I knew by heart.
    But back then, it was just an old house, two miles away from Poppy, across the road from the Bell farm.
    I turned around.
    Poppy stood in the dusty sunshine of my bedroom, wearing nothing but a thin white summer dress and the skin she was born in.
    How could something so soft and supple and flawless as Poppy’s skin hide a heart as black as hers? How could it show none of what was underneath, not one trace?
    I’d read
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
I wondered if Poppy had a painting of herself locked in an attic . . . a painting that was growing old and evil and ugly and rotten, while she stayed young and beautiful and rosy-cheeked.
    I sat on the bare mattress with a sigh. Poppy crawled into my lap. She kissed my neck. Her hands were on my shoulders, chest, stomach, down down down . . .
    â€œNo,” I whispered. And then louder
. “No.”
    I picked up Poppy by her hips and moved her onto the bed beside me. Her dress was pushed up to her thighs, and she crossed her naked legs, looked up, and smiled. “So neveragain? Is that it? You’re done with me now? You move out to this rat-hole farmhouse and suddenly it’s over?”
    I met her eyes. “Yes.”
    She laughed. She laughed, and it was hard and slick and cold, like chewing on ice. She got up from the bed and went to one of the two big windows on the east wall that faced the road, and the Bell farm.
    â€œYou’re going to be living next to
her
now.” Poppy glanced at me over her shoulder, her eyes mean and sly. “Feral Bell. That should prove interesting for you.”
    â€œDon’t call her that.” I got up off the bed and joined her at the window. I looked past the three lilac bushes, past the old well, past the rope swing on the ancient oak tree, past the pine trees, past the fields of corn on the left that were rented out to a neighboring farm, past the apple orchard, across the road.
    Our houses were close, even with the gravel lane between them. I could see everything. I saw chickens running around, following a rooster, and two goats in a white pen, and three kids playing with a dog, and another climbing the ladder of the red barn. I could hear shouts and laughter and crowing and clucking and barking. I could even smell gingerbread in the oven—the dark, sweet, spicy smell drifted right