Read Online The Blue Girl by Laurie Foos - Free Book Online

questionnaire under the blanket. It’s dark, but I’ve already memorized the questions. Cyanosis, it said on the website. Caused by lack of oxygen. I breathe as deeply as I can and try to imagine the oxygen seeping into my cells.
    I dream the blue girl is back. She’s sitting outside on the grass behind the auditorium eating something out of aluminum foil. Rebecca and I stand by the window on thesecond floor looking down at her. She looks right back up at us. Her mouth moves very slowly as she eats.
    She got bluer , Rebecca says.
    Audrey comes up behind us. I turn around to her, but she looks right past me out the window. She’s wearing a gray sweater that hangs off her shoulders. It looks like her shoulder bones might pop right out of her skin, and her eyes look all hollow with dark veins around them. I look down at her fingernails to check to see if they’re blue, and they are. My poor friend Audrey, just a mass of cells.
    Doesn’t she look bluer to you? Rebecca asks.
    I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or to Audrey, so I don’t say anything and neither does Audrey. We just stand there at the big window that looks out over the field and watch her as she picks stuff out of aluminum foil and eats it.
    What do you think she’s eating? Rebecca asks.
    I think maybe cheese or pieces of meat, something with a lot of protein and vitamin B. She needs riboflavin to oxygenate her blood. Rebecca thinks she eats plants that grow out by the lake.
    Maybe she eats blueberries , Rebecca says, and then she moves away from the window and says, I’m going to find out .
    She turns around and walks down the stairs to the double doors that lead out to the field. I grab Audrey’s sleeve to pull her along. Her feet shuffle when she walks,and for a second on the way down the stairs, I think that if I let go of Audrey, she’ll fall and her bones will crack open as her body slams into the steps, and I won’t know what to do because I haven’t studied the skeletal system enough.
    I reach over to hold both hands around Audrey’s arm when Greg sneaks up behind us.
    What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Greg says.
    Audrey slips away from me. Rebecca starts pulling on the door handle. The doors are made of metal, and they bang every time Rebecca yanks at the handle.
    The blue girl’s out there , I tell Greg.
    No fucking way , Greg says.
    Out of the corner of my eye I see Audrey leaning against the wall, shaking her head. I’m about to ask her what’s wrong when the bell rings. I press my biology book hard against my chest and tell myself to think about my cells because it’s getting harder and harder to breathe. I think, Swollen epiglottis, bronchial obstruction , when the door flings open, slamming against the wall and sending Rebecca flying into me. My biology book sails out of my arms and lands with a crack on the floor. The blue girl just stands there at the top of the stairs. Her lips tremble as she stands there staring at us. She looks at Audrey and then at Rebecca and then at me. I try to smile at her, but I can’t, my lips won’t move.
    All of a sudden her mouth opens. She looks like she’s going to speak, and then a wind comes out of nowhere, a huge gust that makes all the butterfly clips fly out of my hair. The wind blows harder. The glass rattles in the windows. I see Audrey in the corner, pinned against the wall by the wind, and I think, Someone has to come, someone has to help us . The blue girl’s mouth opens wider, and the wind spins all around us. It hurts my ears. It sounds like screaming.
    Greg yells, Shut the fucking door! but before anyone can move, the blue girl gets caught in the wind. It looks like slow motion, like a movie, her arms and hands twirling around in the wind. Her legs fly up in the air and her hair whips around. The wind knocks me down, hard. I feel the hard floor against my spine. A pain shoots through my lower