The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,101
sad?” Laurel had asked.
“I don’t know,” Thalia had said. And then she’d peeped at Laurel, her mouth expanding into the baby predecessor of her wide wolf’s smile, and added, “Maybe he’s sad because he’s yours. I bet he wishes he was my pony.”
She’d embellished on that theory until Laurel was the one who was crying and running to tell Mother.
Now Laurel said, “You were always you, but—”
“Thank you,” Thalia said. Her anger receded slightly. She leaned sideways toward Laurel, intent on proving her case. “Scoop two: Have you ever noticed the mouth on me? I’m not the vulnerable secret-keeping sort. I was born a pedophile’s worst nightmare, and if Marty had tried any crap with me, I’d have set up a sting and tried to catch his ass on film. The closest Marty ever came to getting out of line with me was when I was eleven or so. He showed me his dick.”
Laurel’s breath caught. In the backseat, David had gone quiet, observing the two of them.
“What did you do?” Laurel said.
“I put one hand on my hip, and I looked that thing right in its eye and said, ‘I’ve seen better.’”
A squawk of laughter escaped Laurel. “You didn’t!”
Thalia slowed. They were in Century, approaching the Piggly Wiggly. It was set on the Florida side of the state line to avoid Alabama taxes. On Marty’s last hunting trip, they’d stopped there to buy beef jerky and Coors and bags of honey-roasted peanuts.
“I was losing my crap inside, Bug. Don’t get me wrong, but I would have ripped out my own kidneys and cooked them up with eggs before I’d have let him see that. Plus, you know, by then I had seen better.”
Laurel blinked. “You had not.”
They crossed over into Alabama, the town changing from Century to Flomaton in the space of a blink.
“Oh, yeah. A couple of months before, I gave Lisa Cartwright a dollar to let me climb the sycamore tree in her yard. I could see straight into the back bathroom. You remember her older brother, Lewis? He was fifteen and could not leave himself alone. He had this monstrous appendage that turned purple when he made it angry. That kid was hung like a Trojan soldier.”
“Thalia, stop,” Laurel said. “When Marty showed you, why didn’t you tell anyone, if you had such a mouth?”
Thalia peeked at Laurel, then returned her focus to the road. “You know why I didn’t.”
Laurel started to shake her head, but then she did know. “Because there was no need to tell. Mother walked in on it.”
Thalia was nodding. “He set it up that way. I think I knew even then that it had very little to do with me. Marty had known me since I was a fetus, and his kind cherry-pick the kids who won’t tell. He had to know I wasn’t that kid. When he flashed me, it was something he was doing to Mother, part of their endless war over custody of Daddy.”
“How do you know?” Laurel said.
There was a pause, and David said, “Why did—”
Thalia overrode him, talking only to Laurel as if he had stopped existing. “Lots of ways. It’s amazing what you’ll see if you’re paying close attention. I watch people. It helps me later in my work, when I have to pretend to be one. What I don’t understand is how you could tell him all this. You sat down there feeling all squishy-sorry for poor little Thalia, no wonder she’s such a freak. Well, screw you. I won’t be judged like that.”
Now Flomaton was behind them. They were in Alabama proper, and the grass was greener here as they drove north, away from the sandy soil. This was the last road Marty ever drove down in his life.
Finally, Laurel said, “It’s what you do to me all the time.”
“I do not,” Thalia said, an instant dismissal.
“You do. I don’t see how you can be happy, living hand to mouth in your weird, gross marriage. Maybe I did try to explain that with Marty. I hate your life, and if I knew how, I’d rip you out of it and make you do right. That’s exactly what you did to me. You came here, sure I must be all oppressed and miserable, so you tried to root me out. But you were wrong. You were wrong about every damn thing there was to be wrong about.”
“So were you,” Thalia said. “Well, except Stan Webelow is extraordinarily creepy. I’ll give you that one.”