Read Online Mud Girl by Alison Acheson - Free Book Online Page B

his face is fearful. The shirt sticks to her skin as she struggles with the buttons. “Oh no,” she says. “Oh no!”
I probably sound like Rhodes. But what am I gonna do?
    The boy is edging backwards, away from her, and she only begins to register the fear on his face, and then the phone rings. She’s pulling off the shirt. The sink is filling. Might as well throw the shirt in. She rolls it in a loose ball, and it lands in the sink as she picks up the receiver.
    â€œMiss Jones?” asks a voice on the other end. Grumpy.
    â€œSpeaking.”
    â€œIt’s after eleven,” says the voice, then waits.
    Who?
    â€œYou needn’t bother coming for your interview.” The voice is stiff.
    â€œBut…” she begins, but he’s gone. The job, too.
    A sound does break through the rush in her head: the sound of the back door clicking closed.
    â€œDyl!” she calls, her voice squawking as if she has a reed instrument stuck in her throat. “Dyl!” She hurries after him.
No. No. No. Can’t be.
    She can’t see him when she steps onto the deck.
No. No. No. Can’t be. There’s been no splash. Not that she’s heard…
    She forces herself to go to the edge, to look into the water. She doesn’t want to see what she expects to.
    But there’s no little body in the water. Maybe he’s gone under, sucked down…or he’s beneath the boards. She gets down, lies on the boards. She can feel the rough wood against her midriff.
Oh yeah, I’m in an orange-stained bra.
She looks through the cracks. Just dark water.
    She hears a sound. A lilting sound. A sort of hummy-singsong in the field. She gathers herself up. There he is, in the midst of the grass, some of it high as his waist. As she nears him, he turns to her. In one little mitt of a hand he’s got a clump of dandelion buttons.
Rhodes’s flowers
, is all she can think, as she takes his offering. She kneels in front of him, and can hear her own breath. His eyes are on her, and are again filled with fear. Not his, but hers this time. He must see it in her.
    â€œDon’t ever do that again,” Abi says, her voice like a rusty saw in wood, and then she’s shaking. Couldn’t stop if shetried. He frowns – how many times a day does this kid frown? There’s just too damn many thoughts in his head – and he tentatively stretches his arms around her shoulders. Her sunburned skin is still sore, but she doesn’t pull away. Not until she hears the car horn honking, the catcall. Then she remembers what she’s wearing. Or rather, what she’s not, and she hurries him to the house.
    Her shirt is like a great yellow-streaked balloon, bubbled and floating over the edge of the sink. The telephone receiver beeps from the counter where she dropped it as she ran for the back door. She can see the door to Dad’s bedroom opened just a crack and her guess is that he’s gone for a nap, probably with his pillow over his head as he sometimes does. Water is everywhere, and she splashes through to turn the tap off. She picks up the shirt, and wrings it out right over the floor. She thinks how you’re probably not supposed to swear in front of a two-year-old, but Dyl stops her blast in his own way.
    â€œBoats!” he cries, and before she can stop him, he’s dived onto his front and is lying full-length in the water, two paper boats floating at the tip of his nose. “See! See!” he shouts out. He looks up at her. “See? See? Boats!”
    She stretches out opposite him. The water is deliciously cool on this July day. “I see,” she says, and nudges a boat into race position. She shows him how to blow the little crafts – hedoes, huffing and puffing, with his bum in the air – and it isn’t until the boats are soggy and the water has mostly seeped into the floor, that the front door opens, and there’s