Read The Stud Book for Free Online

hand came back up with a vial of prescription pills. She slapped the vial on the counter. Dulcet and Bitchy perked up their ears.
    “A mistake.” She wrapped the baby blanket more tightly.
    Nyla said, “Oh! She’s got a little bonkie-bonk on her sweet li’l noggin.” She leaned in to kiss the baby’s head.
    Georgie pulled Bella possessively close and ran a finger over the red patch on her girl’s white forehead. “I hit her with the phone.”
    Nyla blanched.
    “It was an accident. It fell on her.” Georgie moved away, toward the bedroom. “You can have those pills. If the phone rings, don’t answer.”
    Dulcet said, “But these drugs are yours. They’re legit—”
    Nyla added, “Georgie, that’s enabling.”
    Georgie, in the next room, called back, “It’s nurturing. Dulcet needs pain pills.” They knew one another well.
    Nyla called after her, “Do you need anything, while we’re here?”
    Georgie’s only answer was the rustle of a comforter and pillows tossed on the bed. Dulcet studied the label on the vial like a fine bottle of wine. She cracked the lid and took out a tablet.
    “We love you!” Nyla shouted.
    Dulcet swallowed her pill with a handful of water from the kitchen faucet. She pulled out her pipe and her stash, and ran the pipe through her damp fingers. “Not much of a welcome.”
    In the back room, the TV spoke in a low murmur.
    “New moms are a world of two. When you’re nursing, your body fills up with chemicals, relaxing hormones—”
    “Relactating,” Dulcet offered.
    “—that make you happy to lie around.”
    “They have synthetic drugs for that now,” Dulcet said, and wiped a drip of water from her chin. She rested her baggie on the counter then packed the pipe. She said, “Who wants to stick around to be your own kid’s best cautionary tale? It’s a setup.” She let her lips find the narrow stem of her pipe and took a swift hit.
    Nyla opened the cake box and touched a finger to what was left of the glazed fruit on top.
    Dulcet’s exhale filled the kitchen with smoke. She tipped her head back to blow the smoke up. Her thin neck was marked with tendons. Her eyes softened.
    Nyla hissed, “Sweetie, there’s a baby in the house!” She turned on the fan over the stove, opened a kitchen window, and flapped her arms to drive the smoke out.
    Dulcet said, “Doing what I can for the planet, supporting hemp farms, right? Hemp fields pull carbon dioxide right out of the air.”
    Obligingly, she blew into the fan’s updraft.
    Nyla flapped both hands at the smoke as though trying to fly, to urge the toxic air out. She said, “Arena wasn’t a cuddly baby. She wouldn’t look at me. For a long time, I thought she was autistic.”
    Through yellowed teeth, and as Nyla did her flapping dance, Dulcet said calmly, “Arena turned out perfectly fabulous.”

A rena had slipped from her high school halls to sit on the edge of a turnaround pit on the side of the road across the street from school, just far enough away to escape the rules. She gave a gentle pat to the dead ferret wrapped around another girl’s neck. A yellow sign over their shoulders read SLOW CHILDREN . Someone had spray-painted an arrow pointing down from the sign to the spot where Arena sat, where smokers and stoners regularly perched along the decidedly uncomfortable corrugated aluminum railing meant to keep cars from sliding into the parking lot of the veterinarian next door.
    She was a lanky colt in a tiny T-shirt that said I ♥ POPCORN and skorts, that skirt-short combination, short enough to fit the child she’d been five years earlier. Her dark hair hung like satin.
    The girl in the ferret pelt, with a jumble of black dreads, watch-gear earrings, and lace-up boots, rested beside her with her eyes closed.
    A guy sat cross-legged in the gravel, wearing the outfit of disenfranchised white boys since the breakout of the Clash thirty-some years earlier: a T-shirt, black jeans, and Converse. Arena knew the Clash