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

hair thin and flat as Mr. Koslowski’s comb-over. She tranquilly observed the thought that even Mr. Koslowski, who was married and had kids, had had his head between somebody’s legs at some point, perhaps even recently. You reached a certain age and that became part of your life, somehow.

When Paula came home from yearbook, Lauren was going to practice her number for tomorrow’s spring musical auditions. A sillyold show tune that stuck in her head from the days when she took piano lessons. Lauren had sung it to the tiles of the showerthat morning as PJ and Sean barked and banged outside the bathroom door. She sang the song to herself as she sat on Paula’sbed, tracing her sock along the floorboards. Downstairs, the television droned. Lauren would know that she sang her song badlyif Paula grunted and nodded and avoided meeting her eye, and that she sang it passably well if Paula flared her nostrils andsmiled and said something acerbic.

Sometimes Lauren thought she trusted Paula more than anyone else, and sometimes she thought it wasn’t a matter of trust, but rather that she didn’t care what Paula thought of her. Maybe she had found a perfect, safe intimacy with Paula, or maybe Paula was just a receptacle—that is, mostly a dump, which is once in a while a place where useful things can be fished out and taken without consequence or remorse. Maybe Lauren served that same function for Paula.

Lauren turned on Paula’s television, like she owned the place, and stared at MTV. There was a new U2 video that was boring-on-purpose:black-and-white footage of buffalo galloping in slow motion, alternating with pictures of flowers and various translationsof the word one. It was sort of transfixing in how boring it was, or just in how different it was from any other video. Mom or Dad wouldsay the video was “arty,” which was maybe the same as boring, although Lauren suspected that you developed a taste and preferencefor arty things the same way you developed a taste for vodka. Until today she hadn’t watched the video through to the end,when it froze on an image of buffalo hurling themselves off a cliff, their bodies seconds away from breaking against the rocksbelow. One of the buffalo was upside down, its hooves poised daintily in the air, comical and ghastly. Lauren felt the purposefulnessof how boring the rest of the video was in a new way. It added another layer of horror to know that galloping toward yourown certain death could be tedious.

Lauren pressed play on whatever tape was in the deck. It was still the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Saturday Night Live. She rewound to the beginning of the cheesy ballad and waited for John to do the WOOOOOOO, and when he did it she forgot herself and laughed out loud. At the end of the song she rewound to the beginning and watchedit again. It was a stupid waste of time to just lie here watching something she’d already seen, laughing at the same jokelike she was hearing it for the first time, but if Paula walked in right now Lauren wouldn’t be embarrassed. Paula would justsit down and watch with her. They wouldn’t even have to talk about it.

Lauren wondered what Mirela was doing now. Mirela was why Lauren was sitting here, alone, in another family’s house, which was funny since Lauren was always telling Mom to try leaving Mirela alone. “Just let her be,” Lauren said. “Give her some room to breathe.”

“She doesn’t truly want to be left alone,” Mom said. “Not deep down. It’s just that being left alone is what she’s used to.She is comfortable with neglect and isolation. And that’s unfair to her. No child should have to get used to that. We haveto break her of the habit. We have to teach her how to love us and how to be loved, how to accept love.”

Lauren understood why Mom took it personally. Mom told Mirela she would never leave her. She said it over and over, like oneof her prayers. Mom thought Mirela was afraid she’d be left alone. But maybe Mom had that all wrong. Maybe Mirela was afraidthat Mom would stay.

 

“—I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood—”

“Okay, Lauren, we get it,” Mr. Smith called out.

Lauren squinted out into the seats from where she stood on the auditorium stage, beside the piano and Deepa, who was playingfor spring musical auditions.

“What?” Lauren asked.

“What?” Deepa asked.

“We’re good here,” Mr. Smith said.

“I just started—I didn’t even get to the bridge—” Lauren said.

“You told me you couldn’t sing,” Mr. Smith said. “Remember? I’m taking you at your word.”

“I don’t get it,” Lauren and Deepa said in unison.

Mr. Smith showed his teeth in a rectangle, like he’d just smelled something rotten.

“Should I run lines with Stitch now?” Lauren asked, glancing over at Stitch, who was waiting in the wings. “Isn’t there a—dancecomponent? To the audition?”

Mr. Smith clapped once and jabbed his thumbs toward the exits. “Lauren! You’re done! Goodbye!”

Lauren threw up her hands and walked offstage, Deepa calling after her to take her sheet music.

“What an asshole,” Stitch whispered as Lauren passed him, and she laughed loud, hoping Mr. Smith could hear her. She hopedhe could see that it was Stitch who had made her laugh.

She arranged a tight smile to screen off the surprised faces of the students waiting outside for their own auditions: Andy’ssmirk, Claire’s pitying pout, Paula’s piggy smile. Lauren couldn’t have been onstage more than five minutes before Mr. Smithordered her away. She grinned and shrugged as she walked past them—strolling with stringent casualness toward the front entranceof Bethune and, just beyond it, the sunken cafeteria—and the performance didn’t feel fake. It felt great—she would not haveto be in the stupid musical! She would not have to spend weeks slouching around in Tedquarters, slimy Domino’s pizza boxesstrewn around, listening to Andy bitch about his costume or his fellow castmates’ poor vocal modulation! She would not haveto pursue Mr. Smith’s erratic approval except