Read Online A Girl Named Digit by Annabel Monaghan - Free Book Online
Authors: Annabel Monaghan
Tags: General Fiction
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have jumps right on the brain slide and flies out of my mouth. Like right now, for instance: “It seems to me that ever since I failed to stop eight people from being blown up, every thought I have flies right out of my mouth. I suspect it’s shock, but I wouldn’t call it mysterious.”
“I don’t know. There’s something mysterious about you; maybe you don’t even know it. I don’t meet a lot of kids who spend their spare time hunting terrorists.”
Kids. Did he have to keep saying that? There I was in my best-fitting jeans with my best-fitting white T-shirt about to lie down and go to sleep next to a twenty-one-year-old man for God’s sake! I felt less like a kid than I ever had.
After we’d finished a Coke, a turkey sandwich, and three episodes of
Everybody Loves Raymond,
the reality of our situation started to sink in. This had been the first day of who knew how many that we were going to be stuck in that room. I looked around at the four gray walls, the corner bathroom complete with both a toilet and a sink, and our two makeshift beds. It was a little hopeless.
“Wanna play cards?” John reached for his survival pack—really just a duffle bag, but I imagined there were tons of Bondesque gadgets in there. A deck of cards seemed a little low-tech.
“I’ll play gin.” He dealt us each seven cards on the tiny table between our chairs. I tried to adapt, as I am a ten-card gin player, well, since I was three. We played silently, one word uttered every five minutes or so: “Gin.”
After I’d beat him twelve times in a row, he put his cards down and looked at me suspiciously. “You count cards too?”
“It’s not different from any other random pattern. I mean remembering a sequence of numbers, colors, and letters that has passed by leads you to a probability of what the next card is going to be. It’s really pretty easy. For me.” I was surprising myself. I would normally have let someone beat me at gin to avoid having this conversation. Especially someone who was becoming more relaxed and a tad bit hotter every second. But don’t get any ideas—it’s not as if I had suddenly experienced some metamorphosis and, like a caterpillar breaking free to reveal its true nature as a butterfly, I was finally being my true Self. It’s more like I’d already let my SAT scores out of the bag, and I knew I was going to be stuck here for a while. I didn’t want to beat the terrorists to the punch by dying of boredom.
“It’s all so crazy, isn’t it?” I was kind of thinking out loud.
“I agree it is all crazy. But which part are you talking about?”
“The terrorists wanting to kill me. So that I won’t stop them from protecting life. I guess a forest or a stream is more defenseless than I am, but not by much. I mean, how many people do they have to kill to save the planet?”
John shrugged. “I don’t know, but we’re doing a lot of damage. I read that Americans are using like 21 million barrels of oil every day. We’re going to blow through a lot of resources in the next ten years.”
“We are about 309 million Americans with a population growing at 1 percent a year. So that’ll be 341 million people using 23 million barrels of oil per day in ten years.” It sort of slipped out.
John stared at me in amazement. “Do you hire yourself out for parties?”
“Yep, that’s why they call me Party Girl.” I laughed for the first time, even though it was at my own inside joke. This was sort of fun, showing off for a person who wasn’t my dad.
I got up and paced back and forth across our cell, which took exactly six steps in either direction. “Can we go outside? Is there a roof deck or anywhere we can breathe for a second?”
John raised an eyebrow. “Yes, welcome to the St. Regis Hotel. Please take the far elevator bank to the Rooftop Lounge, where our host will meet you to freshen up your drink and slit your throat . . .”
I stopped pacing and my hand darted up to my neck. John
“I don’t know. There’s something mysterious about you; maybe you don’t even know it. I don’t meet a lot of kids who spend their spare time hunting terrorists.”
Kids. Did he have to keep saying that? There I was in my best-fitting jeans with my best-fitting white T-shirt about to lie down and go to sleep next to a twenty-one-year-old man for God’s sake! I felt less like a kid than I ever had.
After we’d finished a Coke, a turkey sandwich, and three episodes of
Everybody Loves Raymond,
the reality of our situation started to sink in. This had been the first day of who knew how many that we were going to be stuck in that room. I looked around at the four gray walls, the corner bathroom complete with both a toilet and a sink, and our two makeshift beds. It was a little hopeless.
“Wanna play cards?” John reached for his survival pack—really just a duffle bag, but I imagined there were tons of Bondesque gadgets in there. A deck of cards seemed a little low-tech.
“I’ll play gin.” He dealt us each seven cards on the tiny table between our chairs. I tried to adapt, as I am a ten-card gin player, well, since I was three. We played silently, one word uttered every five minutes or so: “Gin.”
After I’d beat him twelve times in a row, he put his cards down and looked at me suspiciously. “You count cards too?”
“It’s not different from any other random pattern. I mean remembering a sequence of numbers, colors, and letters that has passed by leads you to a probability of what the next card is going to be. It’s really pretty easy. For me.” I was surprising myself. I would normally have let someone beat me at gin to avoid having this conversation. Especially someone who was becoming more relaxed and a tad bit hotter every second. But don’t get any ideas—it’s not as if I had suddenly experienced some metamorphosis and, like a caterpillar breaking free to reveal its true nature as a butterfly, I was finally being my true Self. It’s more like I’d already let my SAT scores out of the bag, and I knew I was going to be stuck here for a while. I didn’t want to beat the terrorists to the punch by dying of boredom.
“It’s all so crazy, isn’t it?” I was kind of thinking out loud.
“I agree it is all crazy. But which part are you talking about?”
“The terrorists wanting to kill me. So that I won’t stop them from protecting life. I guess a forest or a stream is more defenseless than I am, but not by much. I mean, how many people do they have to kill to save the planet?”
John shrugged. “I don’t know, but we’re doing a lot of damage. I read that Americans are using like 21 million barrels of oil every day. We’re going to blow through a lot of resources in the next ten years.”
“We are about 309 million Americans with a population growing at 1 percent a year. So that’ll be 341 million people using 23 million barrels of oil per day in ten years.” It sort of slipped out.
John stared at me in amazement. “Do you hire yourself out for parties?”
“Yep, that’s why they call me Party Girl.” I laughed for the first time, even though it was at my own inside joke. This was sort of fun, showing off for a person who wasn’t my dad.
I got up and paced back and forth across our cell, which took exactly six steps in either direction. “Can we go outside? Is there a roof deck or anywhere we can breathe for a second?”
John raised an eyebrow. “Yes, welcome to the St. Regis Hotel. Please take the far elevator bank to the Rooftop Lounge, where our host will meet you to freshen up your drink and slit your throat . . .”
I stopped pacing and my hand darted up to my neck. John
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