Read Online Torched by April Henry - Free Book Online

You wore a sweatshirt or sweater on top of another top in a completely different color and took the top layer off as soon as you were done. That way any potential witness would give a misleading description of who the police should be on the lookout for.
    “Actually, I make stuff,” I said. “Like this sweater.” It had begun life as an unadorned teal-blue cardigan, but now it had appliquéd four-petaled felt flowers—grass green, sky blue and bright fuchsia. The stems were embroidered with fuzzy purple yarn.
    “Nice,” she said. “I make stuff, too.”
    She was wearing the same clothes she had in my parents’ living room, black Cahartt overalls and a plain olive-green T-shirt. I could not imagine Blue wearing red velvet anything.
    “Furniture, not clothes,” she said, reading my look. “It’s how I make my living, actually. I get on my bike every morning and ride up and down the streets of Portland, looking for reject furniture people have put out on the curb for the garbageman. I know all the trash routes in a twenty-mile radius.”
    “What do you do once you find something?” I asked. “Sand it and paint it?”
    “That’s only the beginning. Have you got a minute? Because I live near here and I could show you.”
    Before we left, I bought the tablecloth, two sweaters, a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt for a dollar ninety-eight. Blue looked at the dark sweatshirt and jeans and gave me a knowing smile. Her own fabric set her back nearly twelve bucks, which was lot at the Bins. Once we were outside, she unlocked her bicycle and rolled it home next to me, while I carried both of our purchases.
    “So have you decided on your action?” Blue asked once we reached an empty stretch of sidewalk where no one could overhear us.
    “Yeah. The Federal Predator Control Office.”
    “Why did you pick that place?”
    “Because something in Oregon should still be left wild.” I had read on the Internet that Federal wildlife agents shot, trapped or poisoned more than 1.6 million animals a year—all because they were considered a threat to livestock, crops or travel. Another, more basic reason was that the Federal Predator Control Office was on a quiet street and no one would be in the building in the middle of the night.
    Blue nodded thoughtfully. Her expression lightened as she stopped in front of a tiny house with a detached ramshackle garage that looked like an afterthought. “We’re home. The house was built in 1911, but the garage came along about ten years later, when they figured out cars weren’t a fad.”
    She took a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the huge, rusty padlock. Instead of a roll-up door, the garage had two doors that swung out like a giant cupboard. Inside were more than a dozen pieces of furniture, including a battered desk, a small wooden table, a dresser that had been painted hot pink decades ago and old windows with hinges still attached. There were parts of furniture, too. I saw random table and chair legs, a column and a couple of lengths of molding.
    “This is pretty cool,” I said, leaning down to look at a cherub’s head.
    “I like castaways,” she said. She pulled out an old upholstered chair with claw feet, arms turned out like wings and a back that spread like a fan. It looked like animals had been eating and/or living in it. And it smelled like they had been peeing on it, too. Blue didn’t seem fazed. “I’m going to tear this down to the wood and springs and reupholster it with this fabric.”
    “Wow,” I said as she took the bolt of velvet from my arms. “This makes what I do with clothes look like nothing. How do you know how to do all those things?”
    She shrugged. “I just figured it out. After all, if I make a mistake, I’m not out very much. And I never try to make it look new. That would be boring. Like, I’m going to turn that window into a series of picture frames, but I’ll leave the hinges on. It’s like a reminder of what something used