Read Online Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard - Free Book Online Page B

and fake turquoise jewelry. There wasn’t much more to town than that. On side streets, the junk shop, the post office, and the Washokey Gazette. Bars and churches—Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal—all of which served as the social headquarters for Washokey grown-ups.
    Solomon’s was the only bar located next door to a church. As I approached it, I heard the twang of country music, along with male laughter slurred by booze. My jog slowed until I was trudging with my head down, as if there were a wind to lean into, though there was no wind, not that night.
    I stopped when I saw the yellow chow dog sprawled in front of the bar’s back doorway. Milky cataracts fogged his eyes. He panted at me, his purple tongue hanging out like a piece of Canadian bacon. Usually, he slept out front.
    I stood on the other side of the alley, breathing in the lingering scent of mosquito poison, watching the dog’s barrel chest rise and fall, and I thought, I can’t do this .
    Suddenly, the door swung open and Mandarin burst out, along with a blast of music. It seemed almost magical, as if I’d willed her appearance through telekinesis. She wore a black cocktail apron, spiked with pens and straws, and she’d tied back her hair in a proper ponytail, with elastic instead of yarn.
    “Grace?” she said. “What the hell?”
    I realized how creepy I must have looked, standing there in the shadowy alley. I took one step forward, then halted as a man came out of the doorway behind her. He was tall and thin with bug-out eyes and a dopey smile, like he couldn’t believe his good fortune.
    “Who’re you?” he asked me.
    Ignoring him, I took a deep breath. “I wanted to apologize for the way I acted earlier,” I said. “It was stupid.”
    “Hey,” Mandarin said. “No big deal.”
    “I’m really embarrassed.”
    “It’s no big deal. Truly.”
    When I glanced up, she was smiling, but there was nothing mocking about it. “I really am sorry.”
    “All forgiven. Now cut it out, will you?”
    The knots in my stomach finally began to unwind. “Whose dog is that?” I asked, pointing at the chow with the toe of my shoe.
    Mandarin looked at him fondly. “He’s kind of everybody’s, but I guess he really belongs to my dad. Name’s Remington, like the gun, but we call him Remy.”
    “Remy Ramey,” I said.
    “Sleeps most of the time. He’s, like, sixteen. Even older than you.”
    “So …” I glanced at the door to the bar, still half open.
    Mandarin laughed. “Don’t even think about it. Hell, I’m too young to be here myself legally, but because of my dad, I get away with it. Anyways, I can get off early if I want.”
    “Right now?”
    “Sure, right now. How ’bout we go for a walk?”
    The dopey-faced man cleared his throat. We both looked at him. “Just you wait a minute,” he began. “You said that—”
    “Never mind what I said.” Mandarin shouldered him aside. “Half the time what I say is full of shit.”
    His eyes grew even bulgier, like a disconcerted pug’s—the complete opposite of scary, which I had assumed all Mandarin’s men were. Mandarin withdrew a wad of folded bills from her apron, unwound it from her hips, and tossed it into the weeds beside the back door. She shoved the bills in her pocket. Then she nodded at me, and we took off down the alley together.
    The irrigation canal ran along the southern edge of town, with narrow ditches branching in every direction. They gurgled beside the roads and along the edges of pastures, free water for people’s sheep and horses. When I was eight, I’d leaned over a ditch to pat a neighbor’s horse and had tumbled in. Because no one had seen me fall, I’d been forced to crawl out and slog home alone, leaving a snail trail of muddy footprints behind me.
    Ever since, I’d avoided the canal and its treacherous ditches. But that night was different. The twitter of night birds tickled the air, and the only light came from the moon. Mandarin and I sat on a rocky