Read Online A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

standing in her jeans in the sanctuary to eat that bit of dry, unsalted cracker. She must take the cup from Melissa’s mother and drink. The memory holds a message that she has to get to Big.
    But there is no floor under her feet, and she sinks deeper and deeper into the darkening water, the smel of chlorine shifting into salt. She is al the way under now, learning what Melissa has known al along: If you don’t go al the way, it doesn’t count.
    Melissa is gone, and her mother is gone, and the youth-group kids. The preacher’s hands are gone. There is only Liza, drifting asleep, alone in the black, deeper than anyplace light can touch, no shore in sight.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Mosey
    I SAT BY LIZA for I don’t know how long, waiting for Mrs. Lynch to come. Every now and again, I’d hear the front door open and then someone else tromping through the house and out to the backyard. I stayed put, whispering, “Liza? Liza?”—but my mom lay limp. She’d curled on her bad side in the cold metal hospital bed that looked like something from space. It didn’t belong by her moss green wal with al her feather dream catchers hanging over it. Final y I tried, “Mom?” even though I never cal ed my mom Mom. I always cal ed her Liza. Stil nothing. “You tel me how is that box of bones out in the yard your baby? Liza?”
    I final y heard Mrs. Lynch coming down the hal , talking. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew that nostril-honky voice, al right. My fist snaked out toward Liza like it had its own idea clutched tight inside. When it reached her good side, where al her nerves were working, my thumb and my finger unfolded and got themselves a piece of the skin over her ribs. I pinched her as hard as I could.
    She didn’t move, not a squawk or a shiver. I twisted my pinchy fingers, like she used to, back when she’d tweak my ear and say, “Cool it, Mosey,”
    if I was showing out. She didn’t even twitch, and I let go, panting. She was someplace deeper than sleep, and I couldn’t get to her.
    I wanted to grab her arms and make her sit up and look at me and relearn how to talk and tel me something that made sense, but Mrs. Lynch was paused right outside the bedroom door. Now I could understand her.
    “…hide the dead baby is exactly what a kid would do. Remember that Yankee girl who tried to flush hers down the toilet at her senior prom? That child went right back out to dancing.” I found myself standing up and crossing the room fast, while outside the door Mrs. Lynch said, “That was my first thought, too. Apples and trees, but Mosey’s skinnier than a ribbon fish, and where would she hide a pregnancy? In her ear? In her little back pocket? Maybe she…”
    I yanked the door open, my breath coming so hard it felt like I’d sprinted a mile. Mrs. Lynch jumped and whirled around, clutching her cupped hands to her chest like she was sheltering a teeny, secret rabbit in them, but I knew it was a cel phone.
    “Mosey!” she said, her eyes al shifty. “I thought you must be out back with the rest of them.”
    My voice came out louder than I planned. “It’s not a dead baby. It’s old, old bones, older than me, even, so you shut the hel up.”
    Her caught look disappeared, and Mrs. Lynch drew herself up tal , shaking her head at me so the front frizzes of her grayed-out hair trembled.
    “Young lady, you had best watch how you speak to me.” My eyes blazed so hot it seemed weird to me her face didn’t melt and drip away like mean wax. Her mouth set, and she said, “Do you hear me? Because I can turn around and go right home. You best apologize.”
    I blinked, twice, a thousand ugly words rising up al at once and jamming in my throat so hard it hurt. But I worked every word of them down and swal owed. Mrs. Lynch charged Big three dol ars an hour to sit with Liza and watch soaps, while a real home nurse cost more an hour than Big made. Anyway, what could my mom tel me with her few words that she hadn’t already said in