Read Online Monsoon Season by Katie O’Rourke - Free Book Online Page A

found bloated and floating, the clothing ripped right off them, and they would be buried with clenched fists. Anyone who bothered to pry open their fingers would find two little mounds of red dust in their palms.
    After I’d cleaned my knee and thrown away my nylons, I sat on the bed and stared at the phone. Once I told her what he’d done, it would be real. There’d be no going back, no pretending it hadn’t happened. I reached out once, twice, three times. I kept setting my hand back in my lap. It was shaking.
    Ten minutes later, Donna let herself in and found me in the bedroom, folding shirts.
    ‘No time for that,’ she said, and she pulled the drawer from the bureau, dumped its contents into the open suitcase and tossed it to the floor. It made a loud crash, but didn’t break. ‘We’re outa here in five. You can pack it up all neat once we get it to my place.’
    I nodded. She reached for my face and I pulled away, wincing.
    ‘Got any frozen vegetables?’
    I grimaced.
    ‘Ice pack.’ She shrugged. ‘My mom had a boyfriend.’
    ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
    Donna grunted her scepticism, but returned to emptying the bureau. Dave appeared in the doorway with an empty garbage bag in each hand. Donna finished packing the bedroom while I sat on the couch in the living room and pointed out what was mine, the life Ben and I shared reduced to the division of knick-knacks, DVDs and board games.
    Dave wouldn’t let me help. He wouldn’t look at me, either. It made me feel embarrassed, the way he seemed embarrassed for me.
    Donna pulled my suitcase to the front door and started banging around in the kitchen. She held up a coffee mug in the pass-through, her raised eyebrows forming a question. Ben and I had picked out those mugs the first weekend after I’d moved in. I shook my head. Dave brought the bags to the truck.
    ‘Ready?’
    Donna held the door open and I got to my feet. I hesitated at the TV set, looking at the picture of Ben and me, that lost-little-boy look on his face. Donna was watching me. I had nowhere to put it.
    ‘Is that yours?’ She meant the television.
    ‘Nope,’ I said, and walked outside.
    Neither of us was a picture person. That was the only photo of the two of us.
    I sat on the stone steps to the screen porch, tossing the tennis ball for Gracie. She was hooked to the line that ran between the house and the oak tree fifty feet away. There wasn’t a good way to fence a yard that faced the water, and my parents were less concerned that she’d run off than that she’d go for a swim any time she felt like it. Without that run, Gracie would have trailed mud through the house nine months a year. And in winter she’d fall in an ice hole and never be seen again.
    A mosquito alighted on my bare knee. I watched as it poked its needle-nose into my flesh. When I slapped my leg, Gracie dropped the ball and came running.
    ‘I think you forgot something, silly,’ I said, scratching the top of her head. She sat, panting her dog breath right into my face.
    I flicked the dead bug into the grass. The streak of my own blood was the only proof that it had ever existed. The swelling would come later.
    It was the Fourth of July. The neighbour kids were setting off firecrackers. The small popping noises came at uneven intervals. They made me jumpy.
    I set the pregnancy test on the edge of the sink, sat on the toilet seat and told Donna she could come in. I held my head in my hands as we waited. People always describe these moments in life as seeming to take for ever. For me, it was exactly the opposite. It was like a wave crashing into my body, then rushing away as my feet sank into the sand. I’d barely been able to catch my breath before Donna said, ‘It’s time.’
    I reached for the little plastic wand, looked down at it in my hand and shrugged. ‘It’s positive.’
    Donna crouched on the floor and wrapped me in her arms, but I didn’t break down. I just sat there.
    I got a flight to