Read Online The Worst Thing I've Done by Ursula Hegi - Free Book Online

and entitlement and lies and summer traffic…
    What we want the Hungry Ghost to take away.
    Aunt Stormy knelt down, her trousers the color of sand, her caftan a brilliant blue, her dark braid dividing her back. Soon, the moon would rise, not full yet, not until tomorrow, when we would take out the kayaks for the second day of the ritual, witness the sun go down and the moon rise in its August fullness.
    Lighter fluid in her hand, Aunt Stormy squirted beneath the figure and across the robe. My father squatted next to her, his long thighs parallel to the ground.
    â€œNot so close,” my mother called out, cautious only near fire.
    When the first flames curled up around a newspaper photo, clearing a circle in the photo, brown margins, orange flames, my father came to stand behind my mother, who leaned against him as he folded her into his arms, while she folded her arms around me, the three of us facing the ghost. Ablaze, the figure was in motion—standing still, but in motion—the streamers rippling in the flames, the arms already gone. And when the figure leaned into the flame, into itself, it became the flame, a flutter of red and yellow.

    â€œI’ VE MADE a picnic,” Aunt Stormy told Opal. “For your birthday dinner, sweet one. We’ll take it to the ocean. We just have to stop at a client’s house to make sure the furnace has been repaired.”
    On Noyack Road, a police cruiser was pulling up behind a beige dented car, lights flashing.
    â€œIf this were not a Latino driver,” Aunt Stormy said, “the cop wouldn’t bother. Makes me want to stop and remind him that all of us are immigrants in this country—except for the Native Americans, of course. It’s always the most recent wave that gets it. That cop should go after tailgaters instead.”
    â€œI always notice tailgating more out here,” Mason said.
    â€œBecause they’re used to driving in the city. Right on your tail.” Aunt Stormy glanced at Opal and lowered her voice. “Guess that’s where assholes belong. I used to give them the finger, the entire arm, but then I started hearing about road rage, and now I slow down. Makes them nuts.”
    A block from Sagg Main Beach, she pulled in to the driveway of a yellow house with covered porches. “Two sisters live here,” she said, “both in their eighties. Never been apart. Grew up in Westchester and moved out here when they retired.”
    â€œLiving together their entire lives…,” Mason said, “sounds so peaceful.”
    Aunt Stormy laughed. “You wouldn’t say that if you met the harpies.”
    â€œWhy harpies?”
    â€œThey’re always fighting, talking smut with their sharp little voices, trying to impress me with all the famous people they supposedly know. I’ll show you.”
    In the living room, hundred of snapshots crowded the walls. In each frame two old women—lots of hair and makeup, smiling hard—hovered over one or two people at a table, different people in each snapshot, yet with the same bewildered expression.
    â€œThat’s what’s they do, the harpies…walk up to famous people in restaurants and get a waiter to snap a picture before their victims can say no.”
    â€œSo that’s why the deer-in-the-headlights look,” Mason said.

    W HEN WE got to Sagg Main, the lifeguard was blowing the final whistle, motioning swimmers in for the day. As soon as the lifeguard chair was empty, kids swarmed up the ladders like locusts. Jumped down into the mountain of sand the lifeguards had shoveled in front of the tall chair. Then up again.
    â€œI used to do that,” I said and spread out an old bedsheet, while Aunt Stormy unpacked our dinner.
    A man and a woman, both heavy with masculine features, arrived with towels and shovels. He was about thirty, she twice his age. When he lay on the sand, facing the water, a towel under his head, she began to