Read Online The Secrets of Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

need help getting your mom home?”
    â€œNo thanks.” As they walked away, Leeda gave Murphy the thumbs-up. Murphy rolled her eyes.
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    They didn’t make it as far as Lucretia’s room. Lucretia grabbed the frame of Leeda’s bedroom door as they walked past and flopped inside onto Leeda’s bed. “I’m fine here,” she said.
    â€œBut it’s only eight thirty, and I need my room….” Leeda stood for a moment, looking at Lucretia stretched out on top of her white comforter. Fine. She sat on the very edge of the bed and patted her mom’s shoe awkwardly. “You want some water or anything, Mom?” It hadn’t occurred to her until that moment that maybe it wasn’t good for her mom to drink.
    â€œNo thanks, honey.” Lucretia flopped her head over to look at Leeda, who was about to go. “I guess I’ll never understand how you pick your friends,” Lucretia mumbled, sounding more like the mom she knew. “By the time you get to be my age, you’ll understand better about girlfriends.”
    â€œMurphy’s good for me.” Leeda sighed, unsurprised. “Maybe you never had the right friends.”
    â€œWhat about Rex?”
    Leeda felt the words like a nasty pinch. She believed Rex and Murphy belonged together. She did. But it still hurt sometimes.And she hated that her mom could use it against her and that Murphy and Rex had given her the ammunition.
    â€œI’m sorry.” Lucretia exhaled, shocking Leeda. The phrase wasn’t in her mom’s vocabulary. It had to be the cider talking. “Maybe I just don’t think anyone’s good enough to deserve you.” Leeda couldn’t tell if it was her mom’s pitch-perfect flattery or if she really meant it.
    Then her eyes widened. “What’s that ?” Lucretia asked, thrusting a finger toward Leeda’s desk, where the Barbie she’d found sat, washed and clean.
    â€œThe Barbie? I found it.”
    â€œWhere?”
    Leeda shrugged. “At the orchard. Near the lake.”
    â€œDid you find it in a rock?”
    Leeda did a double take, from her mom to the Barbie and back. “Yeah?”
    Lucretia laughed. “That’s my Barbie!”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    Lucretia only shook her head. “I can’t believe it. I lost it a million years ago. That is just amazing.”
    Leeda looked at the Barbie again. Now it didn’t look like a good omen. It looked…eerie.
    â€œCan I have it?”
    Leeda felt hurt. She’d found it. “Um, maybe?”
    Lucretia, surprisingly, seemed okay with that.
    â€œWell, good night, Mom.”
    But her mom didn’t reply. She was looking at the mirror on the back of the door, reflecting both of them—Lucretia in the bed and Leeda in her long ice-blue homecoming dress.
    â€œDo you know you and I have exactly the same shoulders? That’s why I wanted you to wear this dress. It shows them off.”
    Leeda looked behind her at the mirror. She’d never noticed—she did have her mom’s shoulders—straight as a ledge across, with the tiny bird-like clavicle bone protruding softly and perfectly on each side.
    â€œThey broke the mold when they made our shoulders.”
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    Just in case, Leeda got a glass of water from the kitchen. She saw some trick-or-treaters from the window, a fairy and a ghoul grabbing handfuls of candy from the basket on the porch.
    When she went back upstairs, she watched her mom for a moment, sleeping, her pale arm thrown over her forehead, looking so human. For the first time in a long time, Leeda saw her mom the way she had when she was a kid—like the most beautiful, elusive creature on earth.
    Leeda put the glass on the nightstand. She took the Barbie off the dresser and laid it beside Lucretia on the bed.

Nine
    O utside Kuntry Kitchen, the trick-or-treaters were popping into every door like gophers. Murphy slid out of