Read Online Steeplechase by Krissy Kneen - Free Book Online Page A

about that if you like.’
    He really does know how to make me smile. When I have put the car in gear I rest my hand briefly on his knee and he squeezes mine.
    â€˜Come on,’ he says, ‘let’s blow this crazy popsicle stand.’ And so we do.

Madness
    â€˜Stop!’
    I am facing the wall, the invisible line that must not be crossed. I do not look at her naked and she does not look at me. The masking tape on the ground dividing her side of the room from mine is a solid wall.
    â€˜Stop! Now!’
    When she shouts at me it is like an earthquake, fault lines in the invisible wall spreading out, the sound of her voice a wrecking ball. The wall crumbles. I have already put my jeans on, which is lucky because I am only half naked, the T-shirt clutched to that horrible embarrassment of my chest. I have breasts. There is no use denying this. What might once have been a mistake, a trick of the light, a glance at the wrong angle, is now an undeniable fact. My breasts are large enough to have a small overhang. You are saggy if you can hold a pencil up under them, my sister told me. Emily has not been blighted with breasts. My sister has a simple elegant swelling that just helps to accentuate her slender waist. My sister has no overhang. Our grandmother has kept my sister’s training bra for me to wear and I am wearing it, but my swellings are too big already and the hideous rolls of flesh spill out the side. Fat girls get titties , her awful word so terribly appropriate. My fat-girl titties are hidden only by my T-shirt, which I bunch up over them as the invisible wall between her side of the room and mine tumbles down.
    â€˜Don’t put that shirt on.’
    â€˜Why? Why not?’
    I turn. The wall is down and I must face her. She is staring straight at me but her head is cocked to one side as if she is listening to someone, an invisible person in the doorway to our room.
    â€˜You have to put your shirt on inside out and back to front.’
    â€˜Why? No.’ I turn away and struggle with the armholes, holding the cotton close and attempting to put my arms in at the same time.
    â€˜No!’
    She crosses the line. She is on my side of the room, kicking through the detritus on the floor, wading out into the unknown. She launches herself at me as if there were a bomb and I were about to stumble over it. Our lives apparently depend on this business with the T-shirt. She grabs it, and we struggle briefly before she rips it out of my hands and I am left with only my arms to press against the embarrassment of my flesh.
    She takes the shirt and turns it, inside out, back to front. She grabs me by one arm and I struggle, but she is stronger. I feel the prick of tears, hot in the corners of my eyes. I am worried that she will look at my breasts but she ignores them. She forces my hand into the shirt and drags it over my head with such force that my ear bends back, caught up in the folds of the fabric. I shriek but she ignores me. Her nails dig into my wrist, the other wrist and it is done. My shirt is on, inside out and back to front. She loses interest instantly. She turns and picks her way over the debris on the floor on my side of the room.
    â€˜You should clean your room,’ she tells me.
    I swipe at my damp eyes with my forearm.
    â€˜I am going to turn it round the right way.’ I hold the edges of the T-shirt gingerly, lift it slightly and she shrugs. ‘I will. I’ll do it.’
    â€˜Fine.’
    â€˜So why did you want me to put it on like this?’
    â€˜To save you.’ She picks up a jar of blue water, a paintbrush sticking out of it. The only sign that she has been working. Her side of the room is, of course, immaculate.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜It’s okay now,’ she says, ‘do what you like. The danger’s gone.’
    She lets the door slam closed behind her. I am alone. My eyes still sting. My hair is a tangled mess where she caught