Read Lark for Free Online Page B

ask.
    You can try, says the one who kept watch. They’re usually not up to it.
    But I try anyway, and when I leave the woods for the first time since I’m transparent and flat, I slide between atoms. Electric charges dance on my skin and let me pass.
    Porch lights glow a weary amber. Dead leaves and grasses are tipped in ice. I edge between a crack in the bricks into my house. My parents don’t see me in the hall. They don’t sense me following them into separate rooms—my father in the study, my mother in my bedroom. She opens drawers and runs her hands over my clothes. She pulls strands of hair from my brush, buries her face deep in my pillows trying to catch my scent. She can’t pick up the clothes I left scattered or wipe away the stain from my last cup of tea. She sleeps on the floor in my room, twisted in blankets, dreaming about finding me before I die. Her own room is silent. Clothes hang in her closet. Her shoes are perfectly arranged.
    At his desk, my father searches the internet for support groups for parents of murdered children. He thinks my mother is the one who needs it most. The computer casts his face in blue light. His posture, as always, is perfect. Nearby are sharp pencils and a pad of yellow paper. He needs duties and goals to list and cross off. I lay my hand on his shoulder and breathe close to his ear, but my breath is an absence, empty as a zero, a spot of nothing in the air.
    Dejected, I tell the girls they were right.
    Think of someone else, says another. A friend, not a relative.
    My mind sorts through faces and names. I didn’t realize how lonely I was in my life. My last true friend was Eve, but then we had a fight and never made up. The girls at gymnastics pretended to be my friends, but I knew they were happy when I injured my knee. At school I maximized my time, working on homework during free periods and at lunch instead of hanging out with friends. I stopped going to games and plays. I quit working on the newspaper.
    Think! says the youngest. Or else you’ll be like us. Who was the last person you enjoyed spending time with? Who was the last person who made you laugh?
    Nyetta, I say.

Chapter 16
Nyetta
    Hallie lets her sons watch TV and play video games. They eat processed sugar and drink nonorganic milk. My mom’s afraid I’ll be corrupted. She hates it when I go over to that house. My dad’s waiting for me in the driveway. He doesn’t like to come in because he says my mom always starts a fight.
    “Call me if you want to come home early,” says my mom. She opens the door and watches me leave.
    “Hey, you,” says my dad with a smile. He backs out the driveway and heads to the parkway. He’s in a big hurry. “The boys can’t wait to see you. They’ve challenged us to a Ping-Pong tournament.”
    I sincerely doubt this, but I don’t say anything.
    Hallie’s house is a big white farmhouse near Chain Bridge. It’s one of the oldest houses around, with an attic and a root cellar and a little closet in the kitchen called a larder that’s for things like onions and carrots. Everything is dirty in the right way, like a sprinkle of crumbs on the cutting board and flowers spilling petals from a vase on the windowsill.
    She doesn’t mind if you spill your juice because she only has things that can’t be ruined.
    “After all, I have boys,” she says, “and a hairy old dog.”
    My mom’s house is totally different. We have lots of special things. Most of them are very old. Antiquities, to be exact. My mom started collecting them before I was born. We have mummy beads and urns, coins, oil lamps, a tiny alabaster Venus, and three pomegranates carved from stone. Each one is in a little case because they are so delicate and rare that even the dust shouldn’t touch them.
    Downstairs in the basement, the boys, my father, and I are having the tournament. The boys slam the ball back and forth. They know how to use topspin and make tricky shots. Zeke dashes to the side of the table