Read Online The Gallery of Lost Species by Nina Berkhout - Free Book Online

clotted in her blond hair as our teacher rolled her onto her side to prevent choking, and stuck a pencil between her teeth so she wouldn’t bite down on her tongue.
    At recess, boys would writhe on the ground, mimicking Elinore. She left midway through the term. A rumour spread that she’d died.
    â€œWhat are the seizures like?” I asked him.
    â€œI check out when they come on.”
    â€œDoes it hurt?”
    â€œThe headaches feel like knives behind my eyes.”
    â€œSo you know when it’s going to happen?”
    â€œFlashing lights can bring them on. Otherwise it’s random.”
    He walked around the unlit store, browsing the vitrines through his thick glasses. When he stared at me straight on, I got shy.
    He deactivated the alarm panel at the back of a case, pulled a key out from under his baseball cap, and slid the door open.
    I took a puff from my inhaler. “Why do you steal?”
    â€œI’m saving for medicine in the States that’ll cure me.”
    â€œYour mom won’t get you that?”
    â€œShe says it could leave me brain-dead.”
    Expertly, Omar slid his arm in and out of the display so rapidly I couldn’t tell what he’d taken. He came over with his hands in his pockets. His green sneakers made his feet seem enormous, jutting out from his scrawny legs like the shoes of the clowns I collected.
    He stuck his tongue out. On the tip of it there rested the smallest coin I’d ever seen.
    â€œFish scales.”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œThey’re called fish scales. For their size and their minnowy look.”
    â€œWhere do you get the fakes from?”
    â€œMy mom makes me go to group counselling. A bunch of epileptics sit in a circle and talk feelings. There’s this guy there, Grigg. He works in a casino and he’s a coin collector. He deals money to make money to buy money, haha!” Omar slapped his knee, searching my face for a reaction. “Anyway, he hit on my mom, but she saw he had an agenda. He was always eyeing the coins. So one day when he was in the shop and Mom was upstairs, I told him I’d get him what he wanted. I made copies of the cabinet keys while she was in one of her sleeping pill slumbers.” He gave me a sheepish look before going on. “Sometimes he’ll fake seizures, it’s hysterical. The rules are no more than two coins a week. He gives me replicas to replace what we take. He puts what I bring him in a safety deposit box at a bank and sells them at trade shows or to auction houses. You want in?”
    â€œI get paid already.”
    â€œEveryone needs more money.”
    â€œWhat you’re doing is lousy.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t say that if you knew my mom.”
    I went back to cleaning crude lumps.
    Omar picked one up. “I can’t make heads or tails of these,” he said. Then he pulled a pack of cigarillos out of his sleeve and waved it at me. “You want to go smoke a cigar out back?”
    â€œBuzz off,” I said, and he trudged out alone.
    *   *   *
    A T NIGHT IN my room, I examined the pictures of Liam I’d had printed without anybody knowing.
    Most were blurry. I’d snapped too fast in my fervour. What I ended up with were morsels of Liam—a leg moving forward on a rocky slope, an arm raised in the sky, his perfect ear and profile view. I smelled the photos and kissed them. I slid them under my pillow with the stolen glassy rock.
    I copied his address, finding it under a pile of drawings in Viv’s room. Viv would email, so I went for pen and paper. Each day after school I hurried to the mailbox. For every five times I wrote him, he’d send a short note back.
    Dear Edith,
    Sounds like your collection is coming along, keep it up! How’s your sister? I’ve been busy studying land formations in Drumheller. This postcard shows you some hoodoos, famous in this region.
    Liam
    Photographs and letters—the