Read Living Dead Girl for Free Online

the girls giggle and then pretend they want to stop when they see me.
    "I just came to get her and bring her home," he says, sitting down next to me, thigh pushing against mine. He is skinny, with long bony fingers. "You go to school around here?"
    "No," I say, and since I haven't moved my leg away, he leans in toward me. His breath smells like pizza. Ray used to let me eat pizza. I remember the taste of cheese, of pepperoni, grease on my lips.
    "Want to hang out?" he says, and I notice that behindthe hunger his eyes are dazed, like he doesn't or can't or won't see the world. "My car is right behind us, and I've got some pills ..."
    "What's your sister's name?"
    He blinks at me. "Lucy. I'm Jake. Guess I should have said that before."
    I shrug. He grins, nervous. See his gums, they are pink-red, shiny. "So, you wanna ... ?"
    I nod.
    He takes my hand, walks me to his car. Long walk, car in the back of the parking lot, shadowed by trees. All alone. Hiding place. There is a piece of sidewalk, broken, right beside it.
    There has been one other boy. It was when I was fourteen, right after Ray put me on the pill. He whistled at me when I walked to the bathroom at the back of the supermarket, Ray telling me to hurry up while he waited in line at the pharmacy counter for his cholesterol pills.
    The whistling boy came up to me by the bathroom and asked if I wanted company. He had bright red pimples, angry oozing sores, all over his face, and when I said yes he blinked and turned like he was going to run away until I dropped to my knees in front of him.
    I did it because he was so surprised-looking and because his skin was so angry-looking and because I saw he saw my eyes and thought about running. I did it because he wasnothing. I did it because I wished Ray had used the knife instead of tying me to a chair.
    Ray saw my mouth when I came back and knew. I couldn't sit down for a week afterward, and my back, from my shoulders to about my knees, was purple black, then yellow green, for ages. Both my little fingers have crooked knuckles now, and ache before it rains.
    Jake's car is expensive, smell of money underneath the ripe scent of boy. I do not take the pills Jake offers, I know nothing can take away the world. I just push him down into his seat and open his zipper.
    "The backseat's wider," he says, but I shake my head and when he tries to threaten, his hands grabbing my hair, I dig my fingers into them, right into his skin, until he moves them away.
    When I'm done, I sit up and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. He is looking at me, glassy-eyed still, but something in my face changes that, makes his expression shift, go alarmed. Almost frightened.
    "You ..." he says, trailing off, and I realize what he sees. That this was nothing to me, that his want was not mine. Is not mine.
    I lean in, staring at his eyes more closely. His face turns red.
    "I have to go," he says. "Get--get out of the car." Mouth works, and he spits out, "bitch," but it's a whimper. I smileto let him know I know his word is nothing, and he shivers, glassy eyes blinking fast.
    I watch him go, then circle around and stand by a cluster of trees almost out of sight of the swings. Lucy is still staring at the clouds. Still dreaming.
    Jake comes back for her later, face smoothed out, the pills I saw him take swimming through him. He tells Lucy something, and she stops swinging but doesn't come with him. She is still watching the sky. I wait for him to grab her arm, but he doesn't. He just waits, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched, and eventually she looks away from the clouds and walks, turning in wide circles and telling stories, out of the park.
    I walk to the bus stop and wait. On the way back, I try to picture having things I want, like mountains of food or sleeping without Ray beside me, but I can't. I can only see Ray's face when I tell him there is a girl and that I know how we can get her. I can only see his reaction when I tell him my plan.
    I