Read Online Fingerprints of You by Kristen-Paige Madonia - Free Book Online

information. “He was allergic to mangos and strawberries,” she told me. We were curled on the couch watching Full House reruns together when she said, “He used to say we’d move to Mexico. He used to sayhe’d buy me a hundred striped bikinis,” and then she put her mug of chamomile down on the carpet. I was nine and wondered why my father had a preference for stripes and if she could remember his favorite color, or whether he preferred stripes that ran from head to toe or side to side, but Stella’s eyes were closed before I had the chance to ask.
    I kept each detail planted in my head, hoping one day she might slip and say something monumental, might confess he sent me letters when I was a kid or might tell me he had, in fact, called on each of my birthdays. But of all the things my mother was, she never was a liar. She may have left things out when she wanted, but she never made them up.

     
    That weekend, Stella decided we would spend the day at the mall choosing gifts to mail to various friends she’d kept in touch with over the years. Laura Sanders in New York, who worked as a catalogue model and a waitress. Tony Neilson at the Jersey Shore, “my boss with the tattoos,” she reminded me as we got into the car and headed for Morgantown Mall.
    “Julia Reeves was the dancer in Maryland who helped us pack when we decided to leave,” she said as we stood in Victoria’s Secret and searched through a sale bin for bras and underwear. “Don’t you remember?” she asked. “Julia, with the fingernails,” which brought it all back, the long red pressons she used to slice through the tape as we sealed up our belongings in big cardboard boxes.
    In J.C. Penney we picked out a new watch for Simon, and Stella flirted with the guy behind the men’s jewelry counter, testing to see if she could get a discount on the Seiko, but all J.C. Penney made me think of was her job back in Virginia and the smell of witch hazel and skin at the tattoo shop.Eventually we stopped for lunch at a small grill and pub in the mall, so I could eat again.
    “I’d swear you just downed two eggs and a quarter pound of bacon,” she said as she flagged down the waiter.
    “Yeah, like, three hours ago.”
    After she ordered a vodka tonic, I shot her a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-it’s-only-midafternoon look, but she shrugged and said, “What? It’s happy hour a few hours east of here,” which was true, plus I figured she might take the news of my trip a little better after a drink or two. This was the day I had to tell her: I was running out of time. Emmy had broken the news to her mother earlier that week, and even though she flipped at first, eventually she caved. I think she knew how depressed Emmy had been about her dad, how badly she needed to get out of town, to do something exciting. I also think she was too distracted by the holidays and too worn down by having Emmy’s dad stuck in Afghanistan to argue with Emmy for very long.
    I used my thumb to push the last of my mac and cheese onto my fork, a habit I knew Stella hated.
    “Don’t use your fingers when you eat, Lemon. It’s trashy.”
    She talked for a while about her and Simon and how he thought it’d be good for her to take an art class at WVU, and then I talked for a while about how bizarre the last week at school had been, how obvious it was the students were cashed and the teachers were too burned out to care.
    “Cliff Granger brought his iPod and a docking station to the cafeteria last week and blasted the Yeah Yeah Yeahs the entire lunch period,” I told her as I pushed my plate out of the way and reached for the dessert menu. “No one batted an eye,” I said, and wondered if she would call me out if Iordered a piece of chocolate cake and a slice of apple pie. “Our whole class has senioritis. It’s like we’re all just waiting to get out.”
    And then I put the menu down, took one deep breath, and finally spit out the news I’d been practicing. I’m not sure