The Sight Read Online Free Page B

the milk, I’m calmer. Shay puts a cup down in front of me. It is a blue cup with a green dot on the handle for my thumb to rest on. It’s my favorite. I haven’t told her that, but she knows.
    She breaks off a piece of chocolate and puts it in the bottom of the cup. She puts a spoon and a napkin near my hand. Then she pours the frothy warm milk into my cup. I watch the milk swirl around the chocolate. Within a few seconds, I can see curls of melted chocolate in the milk.
    Shay pours her own milk. We stir, the spoons tinkling softly. We take our first sip. The warmth and the sweetness fill my mouth.
    The first time Shay made me hot chocolate her way, I had been shaking and crying. It’s hard to describe the feeling—it’s panic and pain and rage all mixed together, and it sent me shooting from my bed without thought, moving anywhere to get rid of what I was feeling. She had put a hand on my shoulder, and I had jerked my shoulder away. She had asked me if I wanted to talk, and I had said no, said it very loud and very strong and very mean. I had told her to go away and leave me alone.
    When she didn’t leave, when I heard her rustling around the kitchen, I didn’t turn around. I wouldn’t give an inch. I didn’t care what she was doing, I didn’t want anything she had to give. I almost didn’t drink what she put down in front of me. Then I had taken the tiniest of sips, resolving not to finish it, not to give her the satisfaction. But there was something about the way she sat there, sipping her own drink, that had calmed me. She hadn’t tried to talk. She hadn’t looked at me. She had looked out at the gathering light. I had finished the hot chocolate. I was suddenly grateful for the kitchen lights, the blue cup, the silence.
    I didn’t know how to say thank you. So I washed the cups instead, and the milk pan. She waited at the table. And then we went back to our beds, where I guess we both stared into space until it was time to get up.
    That had set the pattern. Shay doesn’t try to touch me. She doesn’t speak. She just comes and keeps me company until morning starts.
    The birds start to make a racket. The light starts out black and turns blue. I’ve never seen anything like it before. In Maryland, the day just gets lighter. Here, it gets bluer. I wonder where Emily is.
    I drain the chocolate, feeling guilty at how good it tastes. And I wonder if I can stand one more death.

SIX
    No news?
    No news.
    It goes on like that for days.
    I have nothing to do but wait. Shay goes to work. There’s a line between her eyebrows now when she looks at me. I know that she wants to sit down and have a talk. I know exactly what she’s thinking, and it’s not because I can read her mind.
    I do a lot of loud dishwashing, so Shay can’t start a conversation. I clean my closet and rearrange my bookshelves. I appear busy whenever she’s home, and I lay around when she’s gone.
    I try to remember something else—anything else—about Emily.
    I get nothing.
    Sometimes all I remember is how much I wanted her to go away.
    I do everything in a Novocaine-type way that I remember from the period right after Mom’s funeral. Someone dies, and for a while you do nothing. You don’t even notice anything except pain. You see strangers, people on the street, peoplepassing in cars, and you feel like screaming at them. What are you doing? My mother is dead!
    But then, incredibly, days follow each other, and there is life-stuff to do. My grandparents moved into the house so that I could finish out my freshman year. That was really nice of them. But the only bedroom they could use was Mom’s, so we had to pack some of her things away. They were careful to leave plenty of her things around—I’m sure that was Dr. Politsky’s advice, because she counseled us during the “transitions.” So they cleaned out drawers and closets, but they left Mom’s perfume bottles on the dresser and her jewelry in the little blue-and-white bowls she