Read Online Agnes Mallory by Andrew Klavan - Free Book Online

without seeing the shapes of the constellations in all the stars even though they’re really dead and far apart in space.’
    She paused and licked her lips. My nervous check on the broad and domey sky confirmed the daylight there and the wispy clouds across the blue. But I could sense them, I confess, night and the stars, lurking right behind that scrim: like a gaze behind a veil, like a village in mist. What a spooky little girl she was.
    â€˜Like the sky, you mean,’ I said, mostly to hear my own voice. ‘Like they have to see the sky even though it’s not there?’
    She shook her head slowly. ‘No. No. Because this is my spell, that I put on them. And sometimes, when I feel like it, I can climb up to the star rock and wave my hands …’ And she did, sitting up, lifting them crossed before her face and drawing them apart in a slow arc. ‘… and take it off, and all the constellations disappear and there’s just one star after another, a million zillion stars, far and close and dead and not dead and every one alone, even in the Pleiades, even in the Milky Way, and no pictures in them anywhere, only stars, star after star after star after star, millions and zillions.’
    Yes, well, of course, there’s not a whole lot you can say to something like that, so I kept my mouth shut. And she’d fallen silent too, peering up into the veil above us. I couldn’t help watching her, studying her. Her crimped features, her permanent expression of wariness and concern. She must’ve felt me doing it, I did it a long time, but she didn’t stir, she let me.
    Then, without thinking at all, I piped up, ‘Hey, Agnes, how come your Mom was so nervous at lunchtime?’
    â€˜I don’t know. She wasn’t nervous,’ she said. She turned her head, lay her cheek on her knees and peered back at me dolefully.
    â€˜Well, maybe not nervous,’ I said. ‘She just seemed … I dunno. But I mean, how come your Dad stared at the bread like that? He was looking at the bread, I dunno, really funny.’
    â€˜No, he wasn’t.’ Her voice was small now, a monotone, as if she were answering mechanically.
    So, what the heck, I shut up again, scratching my head. I was getting tired of this game. I felt cooped up as if I’d been indoors too long. I had an almost homesick yearning for Hampshire Road, Freddy and Dave, a game of ball.
    â€˜Sometimes I don’t want to talk about my parents,’ said Agnes, in that same small voice. She nested on her knees another silent second or so while I shifted uncomfortably. Then, all at once, her head popped up. Her eyebrows lifted, she gave me the big lamps, the whisper: ‘I know! From now on, let’s only meet here! Okay? Or down by the stream. And we won’t see my parents, and we won’t see anybody. Okay? We won’t tell anyone. We’ll only meet here and it’ll be secret. Okay?’
    I returned her stare without answering. This, more than anything, spooked me good, made me sour inside – nearly nauseous – with fear. What sort of compact was I into here – and so suddenly – and with a girl besides – and with this girl, this queer, queer creature?
    Yet there was no time to think and I was mesmerized and even the instinct to make excuses had only a weak glimmering power beneath the other forces that drew me in with her.
    There we stared back and forth on that rock together silently. And then I heard myself saying: ‘Okay. Okay.’

Freddy and I were digging in my backyard – chink, chink, chink – trowels in the stony earth. This was months after the Queer Lunch and the star rock. Summer was just coming. School was out for good tomorrow.
    â€˜No more Miss Truxell,’ said Freddy, spearing the loose soil.
    We faced each other across the hole, on our knees.
    â€˜Wouldn’t it be awful,’ I said, ‘if she taught sixth grade