The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,40

dinosaur lying on the floor outside the pen, and its one remaining glass eye was hanging by a thread. It was what Laurel’s mother called “a chokey.” Laurel had pinched off the eye and slipped it in her pocket, then tucked the doll back in, close beside the older one.

Laurel had been a child herself, but she’d already known that babies belonged in clean yellow pajamas with feet, sleeping in a house that smelled like her own: of Pine-Sol and Mother’s cooking. Babies shouldn’t be left behind with Poot. Poot’s growly voice and the salt-and-pepper bristles on his face made Laurel think of trolls. His eyes were sunk so deep into his skull that their color was a mystery. The glass dinosaur eye went home with her, safe in her pocket, but the babies stayed in that playpen, stayed in DeLop, and every year when Laurel came back, she found them bigger and more blank-eyed and more broken.

There had been a lot of babies she’d had to leave there. More, it seemed, every year. Now, paused at the iron gate that led from her neighborhood out into the world, she wondered what Bet would be now if Laurel had been allowed to take her.

Without thinking it through, without thinking at all, Laurel said, “I have to call Sissi, Bet. You’re her kid, and it would be wrong not to let her know what’s going on. But if she doesn’t insist you come home early, we’ll take you back the weekend before school starts, like we planned. Okay?”

Bet gave a curt nod. A wait-and-see nod with no trust in it. Then she ducked her head down as if embarrassed. “Can I put thet radio on?” she asked.

Laurel’s nerves weren’t up for a solid hour of the Shelby- inspired girl-bop pop Bet had decided she liked this year. “Check in the glove box,” she said. “Shelby left her Nano in the car, and I think I stuffed it in there.”

Bet fished out the iPod, a hot-pink object that Laurel couldn’t work. Shelby must have given Bet a tutorial, because she popped in the earplugs and worked the front buttons with her thumbs like a pro. Laurel could hear a pounding bass and the tinny voice of Pink or maybe Christina Aguilera. It wasn’t loud enough to be distracting. Laurel pointed the car at Mobile in the blessed relative quiet, ignoring the tribe of running bugs that had decided to have races in her belly.

She was off to get Thalia, if Thalia would allow herself to be gotten. If Laurel had to eat crow pie, then someone should pass her a fork. She was ready. Her real problem with needing her sister’s help was always only this: In order to get it, a person had to talk to Thalia.

CHAPTER 7

Laurel pulled in to the lot attached to the Spotted Dog. It was a converted firehouse, taller than it was wide. Thalia and Gary lived in the old barracks on the top floor. They’d turned the truck bay into a black-box theater, the outsize garage doors kept closed unless they were loading a set out or in. A huge podlike storage trailer was slowly rotting into the ground behind the theater. It was stacked floor to ceiling with the Spotted Dog’s in-house set pieces, a fire hazard behind a building no longer equipped to deal with such a thing.

Thalia’s Pacer was near the people-sized glass door that led into the lobby. Laurel pulled in beside it and shut off the engine. The glass door had a rusty burglar grate over it; the Spotted Dog wasn’t in the best area. Its neighbors included a liquor store and the most frequently robbed Starvin’ Marvin in the state. Laurel put the emergency brake on, and Bet pulled off the headphones and sat there. Laurel hadn’t made a move to get out of the car, so Bet didn’t, either.

The last time Laurel was here, she’d come to see one of Thalia’s plays, an olive branch of an outing if ever there was one. It was A Doll’s House, so Laurel had gotten Shelby a ticket, too. She’d had a vague memory of reading it in AP English back in high school.

She’d forgotten the play, something about a letter, something about a party, but if conservative Pace High had allowed it on the curriculum, it was sure to be suitable for Shelby. Still, Thalia had been known to “adapt” the classics, so Laurel had asked when she’d called to