Read The Dream Where the Losers Go for Free Online Page B

gotten better at hearing them. Forehead pressed to the cold glass, Skey let her eyes carry her from the white glow of a pigeon’s wing to the slate gray of clouds. She slid through the colors of sky, not thinking, not thinking, while a soothing grayness filled her mind and body, slowing things down and smoothing them out. Then she pulled her face back from the window, wiped away the film of moisture she’d left on the glass, and let thought come back.
    The first thing she had to do was retrieve that goddamn stack of books. Tomorrow she would have to meet with Tammy, and at least pretend to be interested in what she said. And somehow she was going to have to make sure the walls didn’t start bleeding again. If they caught her rocking and moaning too often, she would be tossed inside for good. She had been entertaining her emotions too much lately. That was what her mother called it. “You’re entertaining your emotions,” she would snap whenever Skey showed the least sign of getting upset. That was probably how she thought of Skey’s time onthe inside. “My daughter is having an emotional fling,” Skey imagined her mother telling her friends.
    A week after Skey’s arms had been stitched up and her body locked up, her mother had come to visit. She had tapped Skey’s right forearm with a finger and said, “This is what It gets you.” Skey had known immediately what It meant. No need to elaborate; she had been hearing about It for as long as she could remember. She never used to agree with her mother on the It subject, but now she was beginning to wonder. Her mother had no scars on her arms. Her mother wasn’t locked up, with wires crisscrossing her bedroom window. Her mother wasn’t a loser.
    Ditching the gray window, Skey returned to the girls’ washroom to retrieve the Eiffel Tower of textbooks.
    “I CAN’T, JIGGER ,” she said.
    “Why not?” he murmured.
    No one knew, no one knew how her skin sang when he touched her. “You know why not,” she whispered.
    “What happened to your pills?” he asked, slightly impatient.
    “How am I supposed to get birth control in there?” she asked, ducking her head. “No one’s having sex in a lockup.”
    They continued to wrestle gently in the backseat of his car.
    “I’ll get you some,” he whispered.
    “They do room searches,” she said. “If they found pills, they might not let me go to Wellright.”
    With a moan, Jigger buried his face in her neck, and they wrapped themselves together. They were parked in an alley near the lockup. She was due back in twenty minutes.
    “You gotta let me,” he said. “I’ve missed you so much.”
    “If I get pregnant while I’m in there, then what?” How she wanted the soft slide of his hands. She had been so careful with pills before, had never forgotten to take them. Just this once, maybe she would be safe. Just once...
    Entertaining your emotions. Abruptly an image of her mother’s clear, unscarred forearms appeared in Skey’s mind. No emotions there.
    Jigger started fumbling with her jeans.
    “No, Jigger,” she protested.
    “Yes.” He didn’t look at her, started to unzip.
    “No!” she said again, pushing against his chest.
    He pressed her against the seat.
    “Jigger,” she cried. “Stop. Please stop.”
    “Skey,” he whispered, still pressing close. “We didn’t hurt you that much, did we? We were careful, we didn’t want to scare you.” Blue eyes pleading, Jigger traced a finger across her mouth. “We didn’t hurt you, did we?” he repeated. “You just have to get used to it, that’s all. I love you, Skey, I love...”
    Without warning, Skey’s brain took a crazy tilt, swinging deep and round. Her arms came up and she shoved at the weight pressing down on her, shoved until it gave and she could get at the car door, open it and scramble out into the cold November wind. Backing away, she was backing away from the crazy things going through her head, the crazy way that car and the boy in it