Lessons from a Dead Girl(10)

Leah turns the pages while we both stare, speechless. My body tingles all over. I feel the same fear and excitement I felt in the doll closet. I hate it. But I keep looking.

Suddenly we hear the back door open downstairs and my mother’s footsteps wandering through the house.

“Girls?” she calls out.

“Hide it!” I whisper loudly.

Leah laughs. “You should see your face,” she says.

“Leah, please,” I plead. “Put it under the mattress.”

She stands up with the magazine in her hands.

“What’s wrong, Laine? Afraid your mother will catch us?”

“Yes!”

Leah rolls her eyes. “It’s only a stupid magazine. What’s the big deal?”

“Girls?” my mother calls from downstairs. “Are you ready for some lunch?” I hear her feet starting up the stairs. I know at that moment something awful is going to happen.

“Hide it. Please,” I whisper.

Leah dances around the bedroom, swirling the magazine above her head. The blond woman on the cover smiles at me, her large white breasts laughing.

I lunge for the magazine, pull it out of Leah’s hands, and manage to shove it under the mattress right as my mother reaches the top of the stairs.

Leah seems surprised, but only for a second. She giggles.

“What are you girls doing?” my mother asks from the doorway.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Well, not nothing, Laine,” Leah says.

God, I want to kill her. My heart beats so hard and fast it hurts. Sweat prickles out all over my body, hot and cold at the same time.

“We were playing, right, Lainey?” Leah giggles again and sits on the bed.

“What are you up to?” my mother asks suspiciously.

“Nothing,” I say again. But she’s already caught on.

“Why is the dust ruffle on your bed tucked into the mattress?”

I look. The edge of the magazine is sticking slightly out from under the mattress. I’d shoved it under so quickly, I pushed the dust ruffle in, too.

“What is that?”

“Nothing,” I answer quickly.

Leah giggles again.

My mother pulls the magazine out from under the mattress and looks at the cover. Her mouth drops open. She rolls the magazine to hide the cover. Leah keeps giggling. But she sounds nervous now.

“Where did you get this?”

I don’t answer. Leah can’t stop making those awful giggle sounds.

“Where?!”

Leah laughs out loud. I glare at her. “Shut up!” I scream.

My mother grabs my arm so hard, her fingers dig into my muscle.

I pull away and run out of the room, down the stairs, and outside. Out to the pathway in the woods that leads to the big rock Leah and I used to hang out on when we first became friends. We pretended it was an island and we were stranded on it and had to come up with ways we could survive.

I climb the rock and sit on top of it, hugging my knees to my chest. Through the woods and my tears, I see our white farmhouse. It looks quiet, but I know it isn’t. I watch, waiting for some sign of my mother. Or Leah.

I’ve never felt this ugly or embarrassed — this dirty — in my life. I hate the way I feel. I hate it. I’m a pervert. Why else would my body feel that way when I looked at those pictures?

I will never be able to face my mother again.

After a while, I hear leaves crunching in the distance. It’s Leah. She climbs the rock and sits next to me.

I move a little bit away. “What do you want?” I say without looking at her.

“She found the rest,” Leah says. She doesn’t tell me she’s the one who told my mother where to look, but I’m sure she did. She doesn’t say she’s sorry.

Leah and I sit on the rock and watch the house in silence. Waiting.

Soon the back door opens, and my mother marches to the outdoor grill pit with the cardboard box in her arms. She throws it in the pit and runs back into the house. A few minutes later, she returns with a bottle of something in her hand. It must be lighter fluid. She squirts liquid all over the box, then lights the match. The whole thing goes up in flames.

I watch my mother through the smoke. She steps back and turns away from the heavy grayness, walks back to the house, and disappears inside.

The smell of the burnt magazines reaches our rock.

“Men,” Leah says, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose at the smell.

I turn and watch her look at the scene she’s created. Her eyes are slightly squinted so she has tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. It’s like looking at an adult almost, the way those wrinkles map out across her temples.

She catches me watching her, but she doesn’t say anything. She just keeps shaking her head and looking at the burning magazines. I swear she’s trying not to smile. But then she says without looking at me, “I didn’t think that would happen, you know.”

I’m not sure what part she means — finding the magazines, getting caught, telling my mother where they were, or the way they made me feel.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” I say.

“I know. I’m sorry.” She shifts a little next to me. “Your mom shouldn’t make you feel bad about looking. There’s nothing wrong with it. Besides, I’m sure it’s not you she’s really upset with. It’s your dad.”