Read Online Hush Hush by Laura Lippman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Laura Lippman
Tags: USA
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sister should be okay without her. Perhaps even relieved, a little bit. Besides, if Alanna made a reasonable choice, a school in proximity to a school that would suit Ruby, then her sister could follow in two years. Alanna was looking at Division I schools in California, Michigan, and Minnesota. Unfortunately, Ruby kept dropping hints about St. John’s in Annapolis, Georgetown in D.C. Not far enough, in Alanna’s view. They needed to find a place where the name Dawes could sink, ordinary and thick as it sounded, where the sisters could start over. Where people would not be scared of Alanna. Where she would no longer need them to be scared of her.
Because, in the end, it wasn’t about the sarcasm or her success with boys or her looks. The real reason that people were scared of Alanna was because they kept waiting for the switch to flip and for Alanna to go as crazy as her mother.
She looked exactly like her, except for the hair. Alanna had smooth, straight hair, while Ruby had the wild, snaky curls—onlyflat brown instead of their mother’s caramel color—and no one could tame them. Perhaps their mother could have helped Ruby with her hair. When Ruby was small, someone had known how to do it, although that might have been Elyse. In early photographs, Ruby’s hair was, if not as smooth as Alanna’s, then at least presentable. But no one since then—no nanny, no caretaker, no relative, certainly not their father and not Felicia, never Felicia, because Ruby wouldn’t allow Felicia to touch her hair—had been able to solve the problem of Ruby’s curls. Sometimes Alanna thought that the curls fed Ruby’s formidable brain or vice versa. It was as if there was electricity in there, almost making her hair stand on end. Some brats in Ruby’s class, back in middle school, had tried to introduce Medusa as a nickname for her, but Alanna had put an end to that, fast .
She glided down the Jones Falls Expressway, conscious of the Mercedes’s power. She actually missed the Outback. The Mercedes had just been another exercise in triumphing over her stepmother. Felicia was banal, if not benign. But she usually knew better than to try mothering . Alanna had put a stop to that early on, pointing out that Felicia was only fourteen years older than she was. “And although there is a fine tradition of teen motherhood in Baltimore, it’s not generally practiced in our set.” Our set was pure affectation, the kind of Gossip Girl/Pretty Little Liars dialogue that Alanna never heard in real life, much less used. But Felicia, ruthlessly normal Felicia, didn’t get that, and she had been hurt.
“I’m from Cumberland,” she had said.
“Is that like Middle Earth?” Alanna had asked.
Anyway, Felicia from Cumberland had decreed that if a seventeen-year-old girl was to be given a car, then it must be car with no style or cachet. If the point was transportation, then get something with four wheels that went forward and backward. Blah, blah, blah. Alanna had taken the Outback and waited for her first opportunity to wreck it. That had required time and planning, but Alanna never mindedexecuting a plan. She studied the intersections near the new house, found a blind curve, observed that one could hear a car coming before one could see it, even estimate its speed. She sat behind the wheel of her shiny, innocent Outback, listened to a car wheezing up the hill, then pulled out just in time to take the hit on the passenger side. Her timing was slightly off; the car struck hers farther back than she had wanted. And, boy, did it hurt when the air bag deployed. There had been a moment of panic when she thought her lungs might be damaged. But the accident did the trick, and the Outback was replaced by a Mercedes, so— she won, she won, she won . Alanna cared nothing for status, and besides, few material objects could confer status at Roland Park Country School. She liked to win, though.
Being Stephen Dawes’s daughter wasn’t a big deal
Because, in the end, it wasn’t about the sarcasm or her success with boys or her looks. The real reason that people were scared of Alanna was because they kept waiting for the switch to flip and for Alanna to go as crazy as her mother.
She looked exactly like her, except for the hair. Alanna had smooth, straight hair, while Ruby had the wild, snaky curls—onlyflat brown instead of their mother’s caramel color—and no one could tame them. Perhaps their mother could have helped Ruby with her hair. When Ruby was small, someone had known how to do it, although that might have been Elyse. In early photographs, Ruby’s hair was, if not as smooth as Alanna’s, then at least presentable. But no one since then—no nanny, no caretaker, no relative, certainly not their father and not Felicia, never Felicia, because Ruby wouldn’t allow Felicia to touch her hair—had been able to solve the problem of Ruby’s curls. Sometimes Alanna thought that the curls fed Ruby’s formidable brain or vice versa. It was as if there was electricity in there, almost making her hair stand on end. Some brats in Ruby’s class, back in middle school, had tried to introduce Medusa as a nickname for her, but Alanna had put an end to that, fast .
She glided down the Jones Falls Expressway, conscious of the Mercedes’s power. She actually missed the Outback. The Mercedes had just been another exercise in triumphing over her stepmother. Felicia was banal, if not benign. But she usually knew better than to try mothering . Alanna had put a stop to that early on, pointing out that Felicia was only fourteen years older than she was. “And although there is a fine tradition of teen motherhood in Baltimore, it’s not generally practiced in our set.” Our set was pure affectation, the kind of Gossip Girl/Pretty Little Liars dialogue that Alanna never heard in real life, much less used. But Felicia, ruthlessly normal Felicia, didn’t get that, and she had been hurt.
“I’m from Cumberland,” she had said.
“Is that like Middle Earth?” Alanna had asked.
Anyway, Felicia from Cumberland had decreed that if a seventeen-year-old girl was to be given a car, then it must be car with no style or cachet. If the point was transportation, then get something with four wheels that went forward and backward. Blah, blah, blah. Alanna had taken the Outback and waited for her first opportunity to wreck it. That had required time and planning, but Alanna never mindedexecuting a plan. She studied the intersections near the new house, found a blind curve, observed that one could hear a car coming before one could see it, even estimate its speed. She sat behind the wheel of her shiny, innocent Outback, listened to a car wheezing up the hill, then pulled out just in time to take the hit on the passenger side. Her timing was slightly off; the car struck hers farther back than she had wanted. And, boy, did it hurt when the air bag deployed. There had been a moment of panic when she thought her lungs might be damaged. But the accident did the trick, and the Outback was replaced by a Mercedes, so— she won, she won, she won . Alanna cared nothing for status, and besides, few material objects could confer status at Roland Park Country School. She liked to win, though.
Being Stephen Dawes’s daughter wasn’t a big deal
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