Read Online Burning Blue by Paul Griffin - Free Book Online

who . . . No, there aren’t a lot.”
    “Exactly.”
    “But there are a few. The good ones. You’ll see.”
    “I always saw myself with kids. How do I bring a child into my life now? Say I adopt as a single parent. How do I ask my kid to make eye contact with me? I read about it. It’s all in the eyes, the facial expressions, the thousands of tiny movements in the muscles around your eyes, your lips. The child reads them without knowing it. How is she supposed to feel I’m her protector when she’s reading a horror story? I mean, how are you doing this?”
    “It makes me feel good to be able to do this for you.”
    I tap her heart. “How are you keeping it together?”
    “You’ll get past this. We’ll get past it. Find the good in this, Nicole.”
    “The
good
?”
    “You and me. Us. You were running here, there, and everywhere before. Now we have this time together. And when we’re together, we’re stronger. I really mean that. I feel it. I feel stronger, seeing you overcome this. Being with you. You’re empowering me, giving me the courage to face it.”
    “I don’t know how you can even look at It. You don’t even flinch.”
    “I don’t mean the burn. I mean face the . . .”
    “What?”
    She sees herself in the mirror. Suddenly she’s exhausted. She strokes my hair. “You’re allowed to cry for exactly three more minutes. By that time I want you in your Snuggie and in bed, and I’ll scratch your back.”
    We hug and rock in front of the mirror for a while. My eyes are closed. When I open them, I catch Mom eyeing me in the mirror. She sees I’ve caught her and holds me a little closer, but she was staring at me for just a half second too long.
    “What?” I say.
    “Nothing,” she says. She winks and I try to wink, but it hurts too much.
    She holds out her hand, palm up. The little blue pill. “You just seem so agitated, Nicole. Please, sweetheart.”
    I pop it. For her, I swallow the Xanax dry. Anything to get out of this bathroom, to escape the sterile bandage smell, except it’s always with me, the faint scent of bleach. Still, I have to get away from the mirror. From that girl. Me. It.
    Mom tucks me into bed. She cuddles with me and combs my hair with her fingers. The Xanax is starting to work. I think I only blinked, but my eyes are closed for hours. When I open them, Mom’s gone and the sun is strong. I haven’t dreamt a thing. Time just stopped.
    It hits me: that look I caught Mom giving me in the bathroom the night before. Was it suspicion? My second thought is that Jay Nazzaro hasn’t called. I feel like an idiot all over again. I thought he felt it too, a connection, the possibility of deep friendship rooted in common experience: being afraid of the next attack, not knowing when it’s coming. But can you build a real friendship on fear?
    I’m groggy as I head downstairs. Mom is in her studio. She left me a breakfast plate on the counter, steak and eggs. I slide it into the microwave and stare through the window, watching the carousel turn as the food starts to smoke. Suddenly the rain is back . . . loud on the windows. I kept the umbrella Jay fixed for me. He knows what it’s like, people trying not to stare at you. They smile sweetly, but really they’re thinking,
Freak
. Maybe we could be alone together.
    The microwave blips. I cut into the meat, overcooked, gray. The stringiness. The veins. I clench my jaw to keep myself from screaming. I try not to look at it as I cut it up and bag it for our neighbor Mrs. Gluck’s cat. On impulse I grab my phone. To hell with it. I check my recent Calls Sent for Jay’s number and tap it.

She wanted to go riding, as in horseback. I’d been on one of those miniature ponies once, the kind out in front of old-school drugstores. Two quarters get you two minutes of slow-motion bobbing. Other than that, the closest I’d come to a horse was when I stepped in a pile of hay-threaded crap left in the middle of the trail at Ramapo