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

“Thank you for being nice,” she said. “Thank you for making me tapes.”

The warm pooling feeling in her chest, the pleasurable sadness. Stitch was standing close enough to her that she could smellhis pomade and hairspray but also his twigs-and-burlap Stitch smell, the smell of a kid air-guitaring in a big cold pile ofautumn leaves.

“No one seems to have noticed,” Stitch said, scanning the crowd. “Everyone looks happy.”

“He totally blew up at me,” Lauren said.

“Well, but I think that was a good thing,” said Andy, all at once in front of them.

“What do I care what you think?” she said to Andy.

“No—listen—” Andy said.

“We all saw what happened, right?” Stitch said to Andy, nodding, eyes big and meaningful.

“He can’t do that,” Andy said, nodding back. “He can’t act like that, no matter what.”

“Andy just means it’s good that everyone saw what he did,” Stitch said.

“Oh,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry. I misunderstood.”

“It’s okay,” Andy said.

“Just say you were confused,” Abby was saying.

“You didn’t know what you were supposed to say,” Stitch said.

“You were nervous—” Abby was saying.

“—because Mr. Smith was acting so weird,” Andy finished.

“Everyone knows how weird he is,” Claire was saying.

“You did what he wanted,” Andy said.

“He made you do it,” Abby said. “It was his stupid joke and he should have known better. He’s the adult. Okay?”

Lauren felt conscious of herself as part of a branching, respiring system of affinities, loyalties, tribal urges. Breathingin time with it, assimilated. And she felt conscious, too, that she had been part of this system all along, although she struggledto dance in its formation or sing in its same key. An opinion or a set of beliefs could shape itself around the tiniest gestureof a single figure, the leading bird of an echelon nudging the vortex this way or that, according to the particular aerodynamicsof that moment, the direction and speed of the wind. One arm swung forward and the other swung back, one voice began a sentenceand another ended it, not out of coercion or conscious choice or preference, but because all the parts of the body neededto work together, according to their present circumstances.

“Okay,” Lauren said.

Her mother was standing in front of her. Mom looked stricken, stunned. Just like her to overcompensate, just like Mom to watcha crappy high school play and fake it afterward like everyone was about to win Oscars.

Mom’s arms were wrapped around her. Mom’s face was in her neck, breathing her in.

“I love you so much, baby,” Mom said.

Lauren was onstage again. She thought she could feel everybody watching, or trying not to watch. Crazy Mom again. This embracewas too somber and melodramatic for a high school play. Lauren waited for Mirela to pop up beside them, pressing her skinny arms together in a sword to cleave them apart. “Cutda cheese!” she’d always say. Mirela hated it when they hugged or got anywhere near each other. Or maybe Mirela didn’t mindso much now—maybe the trip to Colorado had done some good. Lauren had meant to ask Mom how it went, but she hadn’t gottenaround to it yet.

“Mom?” Lauren said.

“That’s me,” Mom said, her voice wet and snagged.

“Mom, where’s Mirela?”

Of course she’d run away. Running away had become Mirela’s job. She had played a runaway on local TV. Lauren understood whyshe did it. Mirela could find the aloneness she craved and at the same time remain the center of attention; she could haveher cake and hoard it, too. Lauren found a bitter entertainment in watching a search party form on the spot in the cafeteriaand fan out into all points of the radius: front lawn, soccer and football fields, auditorium, second floor. She’d seen itall before. She’d seen it on the news. It was as horrifying and tedious as those buffalo galloping off the cliff.

She walked out the side entrance of Bethune, still in her Pink Ladies jacket and saddle shoes. The moon was full, cloudedover by the lakes. It had been drizzling on and off all day, and now the air was misty and raindrops clung to the grass. Shehalf expected to hear Stitch’s skateboard on the asphalt. She spotted him then, with his dad, already halfway across the footballfield in search of Mirela, Dr. Rosen’s hand on Stitch’s back.

Lauren’s eyes fell on the opening in the chain-link fence. It occurred to her, in an impossible flash, that Mirela had seen her go through the gap every day, had learned it fromher. The gap in the fence was about as tall as Mirela. Lauren crouched to get her sight lines level with Mirela’s. If youwere the size of a high school student, you had to squint at the overgrown grass and weeds that grew just past the school’sproperty line to find the gap in the fence. But at Mirela’s height, it would more likely present itself as a ragged doorwaycut just for her.

Lauren walked toward the fence, her shoes squelch-squelching in the wet grass. She squeezed through the gap, the split end of one link catching on the pink satin of her jacket, andstood at the edge of the open lot on Fox Hollow. “Mirela?” she called.

A rustle of a squirrel, a bird. The crackle of twigs and branches beneath her shoes in the open lot. She reached the sidewalk and stood beneath a streetlight, looking up and down. Fox Hollow was so narrow, more like a wood path than a street. “Mirela?”

She crossed Fox Hollow and walked onto the Reillys’ property, compelled by some dream logic that Mirela had taken Lauren’susual route home. Trying to be like her big sister. Lauren walked around the Reillys’ house into their backyard. “Mirela!”It was abruptly darker now, under the maples and pines.

She had done this. Lauren. She hadn’t thought enough about Mom. She was never home to help. She didn’t pay attention. Herstupid plays that she made them come to. Her stupid birthday party. “Mirela!” she screamed. “Mirela, please!”

“I’ve got her,” she could hear a man’s voice calling.

“Mirela! Someone please help me!”

“I’ve got her—follow the sound