Read Online Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig - Free Book Online

Yeah.’
    â€˜Did you get what you wanted?’
    â€˜I’ll have to wait and see. I never know till the pictures are developed if they’re going to come out or not.’
    They stood on King Street, awkward, putting off the moment of leaving, not so much because they wanted to be together exactly, but because they didn’t know how leaving was supposed to go. A few yards away, a man in a blue suit with a paper bag over his head was playing a guitar and singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ a light frosting of snow on the top of the bag and the shoulders of his jacket.
    â€˜He’s actually not too bad,’ said Alex.
    â€˜What do you suppose the paper bag is about?’
    â€˜Gotta have a trademark of some kind.’
    Susie started walking north, for no clear reason, into the featureless side streets, and Alex followed.
    â€˜There was that guy who used to play the accordion down by the church on Bloor. And he had that nasty dog, the one that bit people. I don’t know what ever happened to him.’
    â€˜I’m kind of hoping he got arrested,’ said Susie. ‘The Spits, though, they were the best buskers ever.’ She took her hat out of her pocket and pushed it onto her chestnut hair. ‘You remember the Spits?’
    â€˜Of course. Of course I do.’
    â€˜I was just thinking about them is all.’ She looked around at the dark windows, the warehouse doors of the small empty street. ‘So. Do you want to get a coffee someplace?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ he said. ‘Let’s do that.’
    They came out onto Queen Street, filled with light and crowds, and ended up at the Black Bull because it was later than he had thought, and the coffee shops were closing. He took the glucometer out of his camera bag to check his blood sugar, and decided that he could order a drink and a grilled cheese sandwich. The bar was loud and dark, the air thick with smoke and the wet smell of beer.
    â€˜Whatever happened to the all-night doughnut stores? Do kids not stay up all night anymore?’ asked Susie, as she looked around at the crowd.
    â€˜They must,’ said Alex, lifting his glass, the beer malty and pleasantly bitter. ‘I’m hoping they just go to places we don’t know about.’
    He leaned back in his chair, feeling the warmth of the alcohol running through his limbs, and then noticed the TV above the bar, figures in white hazmat suits moving behind police tape at the Spadina subway station. ‘Christ, what now?’ he muttered, and stood up and walked over to where he could hear the newsreader explaining that the station had been shut down when someone found traces of white powder on the floor. That there were rumours of irregularities in the blood tests. The chair of the transit commission was dragged onto the camera, blinking and irritable, and then they moved on to the next item, a French diplomat saying something at the UN Security Council, the news crawl under the picture rolling out fragmentary stories of weapons and spies.
    â€˜That’s so not true,’ said Alex, thinking he was talking to himself.
    â€˜What isn’t?’ said Susie beside him.
    â€˜Oh. I thought you were still at the table. I mean the blood tests.
    The blood tests were fine. People are just making shit up.’
    â€˜This is the poisoned girls?’
    â€˜So-called. Yeah.’
    â€˜It always starts with girls. They’re like a highly reactive compound.’
    Alex walked back towards the table with her. ‘I’m very interested in teenage girls, actually,’ she went on. ‘Oh my God, that sounded bad. I hope no one was listening.’
    â€˜Don’t worry. Sex panic is over. It’s totally nineties.’
    â€˜You’re sure they weren’t really poisoned?’
    â€˜I was there. Like I keep telling everyone, I was there. I’m not poisoned, so you tell me what’s going on.’
    â€˜I don’t