Read Online Desert Fish by Cherise Saywell - Free Book Online Page A

how I thought that if they could see inside me they would know everything. They put a mask on my face and I breathed quickly and deeply. I felt the bubble of a laugh escape, but it was just air and the sound inside it seemed to belong tosomeone else. I tore the mask away. Look at me , I hissed. I’m running already. I put it back on my face, sucking at the antiseptic air and then I cried out because the pain was on me again. Someone put a cloth on my forehead and another voice, a woman, said, She doesn’t mean it, they all say things like that. But she wasn’t speaking to me, and I had made up my mind by then anyway.
    I sit up again, hastily, to shake free of the memory. My mouth is watering and my hands are clammy. Through the window that overlooks the pool someone has sat down in the deck chairs: the suntanned woman from yesterday. Today her hair is twisted and clasped so that bits fall loose at the front and flick back from her face. Her sandals are bright pink with kitten heels. The car park is empty. The doors to all the rooms are closed and it makes me sad to see her all dressed up with no-one to appreciate the trouble she’s gone to. Without even thinking I grab my bag, throw in sunscreen and a hat, feeling a delirious rush of relief because she’s there and it feels dangerous to be alone. I just want to pretend to be friends with her for a while.
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    At home, my best friend was called Lexie. We had known each other only a little when we were at school, but since we’d both left early we spent a lot more time together. She’d come over with a magazine and we’d flick through it together. Or she’d bring something she’d bought, a dress or some make-up, for me to approve of. I called her mybest friend because we saw each other regularly. But it was not a close friendship. Lexie was bold and had strong opinions. She liked to talk and I was flattered that she considered me a companion. Even when I was at school I’d had no real friends who called on me. I did not form friendships like other girls. My school report cards had said this. Gilly is a pleasant girl but does not make friends easily. Gilly is not without ability but lacks social confidence. And once, optimistically, Gilly is a thoughtful girl who enjoys spending time on her own.
    Lexie worked on the till at Alderson’s Pharmacy. She knew how to forge her own contraceptive pill prescriptions. Since she wasn’t quite sixteen when she began doing this, she told them at the pharmacy that her doctor had prescribed it for her acne, and true, her spots cleared right up. Her breasts swelled too and she’d had three boyfriends in quick succession. Lexie’s legs were long and skinny and she walked on the insides of her feet so her knees looked as if they were going to knock against each other. She compensated for this by swaying her hips and keeping her thighs close together. It got her a lot of attention.
    After Pete started working at McGill’s she came over to get a closer look at him.
    â€˜Your dad told me you got someone into that room,’ she said. ‘And I saw him at McGill’s.’ Lexie had come straight from work. She’d taken off her rubber-soled lace-ups and pushed her feet into a pair of flip-flops. We were eating potato chip sandwiches, even though it was thirty-five degrees. Lexie ate like a cat. She leaned overher sandwich and gritted her teeth to grind it, as if it was meat. She took tiny bites and didn’t sit back until after she’d swallowed.
    â€˜Why are you so interested?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were taken.’ She’d been going out with a boy called Mick Flaherty who worked at the drive-through liquor store.
    â€˜Might be,’ she said. ‘But Mick hasn’t made it official.’ She leaned her head to the side and looked at me. ‘Do you like him?’
    â€˜Who? Mick?’
    â€˜No, idiot. Your lodger. Pete.’
    â€˜Of