Read Online The American Girl by Kate Horsley - Free Book Online Page A

reply. Later, as I shower, I hear voices raised in anger and can’t tell whose, though I’m sure one is a man. They echo through the rickety pipes, gurgle up from the green-stained plughole as if some dark well hidden under the house has just begun to erupt.

Molly Swift
    JULY 31, 2015
    A fter the announcement about the Blavettes, the hacks camped outside the Hôpital Sainte-Thérèse seemed to breed. I arrived in the parking lot to see new little ones had popped through the tarmac like mushrooms, including a glamorous Italian foreign correspondent with long, red hair like something out of an infomercial, and a bored-looking British tabloid news crew. I parked my broken car and locked it—though this seemed a bit futile, since the passenger door was now held on with gaffer tape—slipped on my aviators, and prepared to run the gauntlet.
    The Italian reporter took me at a gallop, mike in hand, sound and lights trailing behind her. “Aurelia Perla, La Stampa . How do you feel about what is happening to your niece?”
    I held up my hand to shield my face and made a run for the reception area.
    Aurelia ran after me. “Was Quinn enjoying her exchange before the accident?”
    Desperate not to be filmed, I flung myself through the doors and didn’t stop until I got to reception. There Sister Agnès, the receptionist who had gazed at me so cynically over half-moon specs the day before, was all sympathy.
    â€œReally these journalists should not do that, but—” she sighed, patting my hand “—the best we can do is to keep them outside of here.”
    Sister Agnès introduced me to Sister Eglantine, the other nun from the previous day. Ever since the conversation with Bill, I’d been dreading the inevitable moment of discovery: a tap on the shoulder, an unmarked police car pulling up alongside me, a rogue tweet trending, Quinn’s real family showing up. The nuns were so kind to me, so pleased that I was there for Quinn, that I began to feel something I hadn’t anticipated: guilty. Their faith in me made me uneasy. Maybe in this world of paranoia and Google, unquestioning acceptance was the weirdest experience of all.
    In her little room, Quinn lay unmoving, tucked under starched sheets, looking more than ever like a fairy tale princess under a curse. Sister Eglantine bustled around, opening the blinds, placing a stack of cardboard bedpans in a drawer. I held Quinn’s hand and kept half an eye on Eglantine. One of the drawers she opened contained a plastic tray full of personal effects: a scatter of coins, a hair band, and a pair of earrings shaped like bats. An iPhone with a broken screen.
    She must have felt me watching her, because she turned to me and explained in her usual delicate English, “The things shehad with her, when . . .” As if the thought of this had upset her, she abruptly left the room.
    I sat for a while, staring at the pale arms of birches waving in the hospital grounds, pure blue sky spilling between their branches like paint. I wondered how these nuns got to be so nice, when the ones in my high school were witches. Turning my attention to the bed, I looked at Quinn’s hand lying in mine, the groove of her lifeline casting a faint shadow. Her skin felt so new, as if it had just been made. If she never woke and the truth never came to light, what would happen? Would the nuns just keep her here sleeping forever, like Snow White in her glass case?
    Make a difference , Bill had said. That’s what all this was about. It was why I let Quinn’s hand rest on the sheets and crossed the room to the chest of drawers. It was why I reached into the plastic tray until my fingertips found the rough lifeline in the glass of the broken phone. It was why I slipped it into my purse.

Molly Swift
    JULY 31, 2015
    T he phone was charging, the battery percentage nudging slowly up. I’d found an outlet under Quinn’s bed and plugged it