Read Girl In Pieces for Free Online Page B

of socks. Her backpack with all its pins and patches was nowhere to be seen, and her hair had been pulled into a tight, smart high ponytail. If it wasn’t for the pink hair, she would have aged ten years right before my eyes.
    Katrina was still beautiful as hell but I hated it. For the first time in her life she didn’t look like she fit in her own skin.
    “You look different.” I took a step towards her. She tensed again but didn’t move away, just followed my approach with her eyes. “Are you ok?”
    Kat sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and bit just hard enough to pucker the skin. Her busy mind spun away and back, but I couldn’t tell what was going on behind her eyes. Like her brother, she ignored my question.
    “God,” she said finally with a little affectionate laugh. “This place really is a dive. Are those the same booths from the 70s? I don’t think I really noticed how orange they were before. You should get someone in here to update some of this stuff. I can’t even imagine how many grimy guys smeared their sweaty bodies on these things.” Kat glanced towards the tables fondly. “Get rid of all my stupid doodles.”
    Get rid of …a shiver raced across my skin and it was very difficult to stay still. There was something intensely forced about her smile, ruined every time she bit her lip and looked anywhere but at me.
    “Kat--” I started but she laughed suddenly, bright and wrong. Everything about her was so plastic, like a postcard. Greetings from Kat! The weather is perfect. Wish you were here.
    “Did you know,” she said as she toed the bottom rung of a bar stool. “I’ve read more books in the last three weeks than I’ve read in the last year combined? It turns out that having your social life ripped from your hands makes you smarter. My apartment’s cleaner too. If I’d known how easy my life would be, I’d become an introvert ages ago.”
    “I didn’t--”
    “Yes you did,” she interrupted. After a moment of quiet, her eyes drifting aimlessly across the floor, she sighed. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
    “South River will always be yours.”
    “No,” she laughed. Shrugged. “Give me a break. We can barely stand next to each other and approximate human beings.”
    “Then why are you here?”
    Kat pushed past me and wound up at the jukebox, distracted by its shiny buttons and bright lights. She ran her hands across the glass top and absently flipped through the tracks.
    “Julie thought it would make me feel better. She thought if I asked why, why everything, that your answers would make me less crazy. But now that I’m here I don’t think I care why. It won’t change how much I hate you.”
    A flare of anger forced me to turn away from her and head behind the bar. I needed to do something with my hands. That was where my tension heated, made me want to get my hands on something, or someone. I needed that intense, grounding control, where the world made sense beneath my fingers. I needed a dark room and a partner and rope. Control. I needed quiet, peaceful, thunderous control where I could work my emotions out before they became real, breathing things I couldn’t run from.
    Instead I snatched up a dish towel and squeezed it between my fists. I twisted and wrapped it until I’d made a nice, thick cord. It would fit around wrists or ankles. It would make an excellent spur of the moment gag.
    “You were never supposed to be at that party.”
    “That wasn’t your call.”
    “Oh you think so? If Kelli would have told me you were invited I would have put a stop to it immediately and everyone would have respected my wishes. You would have never been allowed in.”
    “You don’t own me, Josh!” She spun around as she yelled, her cheeks pinking and her hands balled into tight little fists. “You can’t stand there lecturing me about people respecting your wishes when you won’t respect mine. I wanted it. I begged for it.”
    Kat taunted me with those last words, with