The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

so they’re both facing the same direction, andshe wraps her arms around her from the back, like this”—Lauren wrapped her arms around an invisible child on her lap—“to stopher moving around so much, to calm her down. She wraps her, like swaddling a baby, and she rocks her like a baby, too. SometimesMirela hums, like she is singing to herself. And they just hold and rock like that until she calms down.”

“Your mother learned that from a licensed professional?”

Lauren suspected she had said too much, or said the wrong thing, but she didn’t know what. It was hard to hear her thoughtsover the ringing, to see her thoughts through the gold spots. “I think it’s just instinct. She calls it the squeeze.”

“Why is your voice shaking?”

“I’m nervous.”

“You’re nervous? Because you’re concerned about your adopted sister?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s okay.” Mr. Smith was rubbing her back. Mom used to do that. Blood pounding in her ears. The gold spots turning blackat the center, the black blooming, the gold a dying outline. But she also had a warm pooling feeling in her chest, a pleasurablesadness.

“My mom said when I was two I had an ear infection,” Lauren said, “and the medicine I had to take gave me crazy tantrums,and she would hold me like that and I would calm down.” There was a creak in her voice, like after sobbing or like when PJand Sean would do frog-monster voice, like Lauren was fake-crying in an All My Sons rehearsal. “It was bright pink medicine. I liked how it tasted. I don’t remember that, though—it’s what my mom told me. Ithink she just goes on what feels right.”

“What feels right.” He was holding her hand with one hand and rubbing her back with the other. He played variations: rubbingcircles and then up and down, tracing ticklish patterns and pushing with the heel of his hand.

“Yeah, it’s just—sometimes my adopted sister is out of control and she needs to calm down and be in a safe place.” She triedto talk in a higher voice, like she could put her voice out of reach of the creak, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop faking.

“That sounds hard,” he said, his hand low on her back.

“It’s okay.”

“Okay. So you can’t try out for the spring musical because your mother is taking care of your sister? And you can help her,somehow? Is that right?”

His rubbing hand traced an oval near the base of her spine, just under the waist of her jeans.

“Well, there’s also . . . to be honest, I can’t sing,” Lauren said, shrugging again.

“That’s just another put-on,” he said, squeezing her hand.

“No, I can’t.”

“Ah, come on,” he said, leaning in so their heads were pressed together, “try me.” He had coffee breath.

“No, it’s true,” she said. “That’s why I used to play the flute, to get out of singing.”

“And how was your embouchure?”

Lauren blushed. The bouch puffed against her ear. A cloud of coffee grains in her eyes, in her nose. She was dizzy. She squeezed his hand back andpulled away.

“Maybe I can help Paula out with the props, if she does that again,” she said, standing up.

“Mm-hm. Just be aware,” Mr. Smith said, taking his pen and looking down at his papers again, “that I’m onto you.”

Her stomach flipped. “What do you mean?”

“That business from before about the birth control,” he said, licking a finger and turning another page. “You and I and Paulaall know very well that’s yet another put-on. You’re just full of put-ons today.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Lauren said.

“Lauren, give me a break.”

“I wasn’t putting anybody on.”

“There is no way,” Mr. Smith said, head down, voice dropping although they were alone in the room, tapping his pen on thedesk, “that your very proper, very Catholic mother would do that.”

“She’s only Catholic for herself,” Lauren said. “She doesn’t force anything on me. I’m not even getting confirmed.”

It was odd to be standing over him like this, talking down at him. He was the one who’d started it.

“These are my people you’re talking about, too, you know,” he said.

“It’s none of your business,” Lauren said.

“You made it my business by bringing it up,” Mr. Smith said, looking up but not in her eyes, “and as your teacher, it is certainly mybusiness if a student is lying to me.”

Her body buzzed with the old thrill, a tingle that traveled up her neck and spidered across the top of her scalp. She stoodat the gate between telling a lie and making it true.

“I’m not lying,” Lauren said. “How much do you want to bet?”

“Wagers of any kind are prohibited on school property,” Mr. Smith said. “Did we learn nothing from the strip poker controversyof last fall?”

“I can prove to you that I’m not lying.”

Mr. Smith put his hands up. “This conversation needs to end here.”

“Why?” Lauren asked.

“Because it’s not appropriate,” he said with an air of finality, twirling his pen. “You are being inappropriate.”

“You mean it’s inappropriate for me to lie to you, which I am not doing? Or it’s inappropriate for us to be talking about birth control pills?”

“Stitch, Rajiv, how nice to see you both,” Mr. Smith said as the boys cartwheeled into the room.

 

These days Stitch and Rajiv moved around Bethune by means of cartwheels and pogo jumps and froggy hops and single axels, thanksto their shared interest in the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the women’s figure skating program in the Albertville Winter Olympics.Sometimes, in mid-conversation, Stitch set his mouth in a perfect line and began whipping his head around in the manner ofthe band’s jumping-bean bass player, then he would pick up the thread of the conversation he was in as if nothing had happened,and no one commented or criticized him, just as no teachers told him off for boing-boinging in a zigzag down the passageway between the yearbook office and the math department, slashing at his air guitar, screwingup his eyes and working his lips in a rubbery ecstasy.

“What a little punk-ass bitch,” Rajiv was saying.

“Rajiv has a case of the