Dying Breath. Wendy Corsi Staub
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Название: Dying Breath
Автор: Wendy Corsi Staub
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Триллеры
isbn: 9780786044559
isbn:
“My parents aren’t cheating on each other.” Tess was disgusted at the sordid state of affairs—literally—in her friends’ lives.
“Then why are they getting divorced out of the blue?”
“They’re not. They’re just…”
“Let me guess, having a ‘trial separation’?”
“Right.”
“Yeah. That’s the first step,” said Lily, who’s been through it enough times to know. She tossed her long black hair. “But, hey, join the club. Hardly anyone’s parents are together, anyway.”
“Plus,” Morrow added, “just think: now your mom will be too wrapped up in herself to bug you about stuff all the time.”
That was it. No surprise from her friends, no advice, no sympathy.
Tess wanted to cry, but instead she took her cue from Morrow and Lily, pasted a big stupid grin on her face, and acted like her parents’ separation was no big deal.
But it is.
Even now, thinking about it, she feels miserable. So miserable that she’d rather think about Julius Caesar’s tragedy than about her own.
She looks back at her annotated text again.
Focus. Fate versus free will.
Tess writes:
Because Julius Caesar believed that “Men at some time are masters of their fates”—
Wait—Caesar didn’t say that about fate. The quote was from Cassius, talking to Caesar’s friend Brutus, right?
She checks the text. Right.
Tess rewrites:
Caesar continuously ignored the omens of his impending death.
Now what?
She should give specific examples of the omens.
Flipping back through the text, she comes up with a bunch: ominous storms, lions in the streets, sacrificial animals that are dissected and turn out not to have hearts…
It’s pretty creepy stuff, Tess decides, writing it all down.
And what about his wife’s foreboding dream about his statue covered in blood? And the soothsayer who warned him to “Beware the Ides of March”?
What are the Ides of March again?
Tess flips through her notes.
Oh—March 15. The day Caesar was assassinated.
Which also happens to be the day Tess’s father moved out.
She misses him desperately. The house feels hollow without him. She feels hollow.
It’s funny, because even when he lived here, he wasn’t around all that much. His job—something high-ranking in computer technology, which she doesn’t really understand—is demanding, and he was always at the office or traveling. But his stuff was here. When you walk past someone’s favorite Yankees cap hanging on a hook in the mudroom, or reach past their leftover midnight pizza in the fridge when you get milk for your morning cereal, it’s kind of like they’re there.
Now the hook by the back door is bare, and all that’s ever in the fridge is healthy crap Mom keeps trying to shove down Tess’s throat.
Also missing from the fridge, besides cold pizza: vodka, white wine, beer…all the booze that used to come and go, almost on a daily basis.
Mom drank.
Now she doesn’t.
Big deal.
The thing is…
It’s a big deal. Whether Tess wants it to be or not. All of it: Mom drinking, Mom not drinking, Dad moving out, the countless rules that haven’t changed since then and the new ones that have been added, the silence, the boredom, the lack of freedom…
God, I hate my life.
Tess looks back at her notes again.
Beware the Ides of March.
Yeah. No kidding.
She scowls and jabs the VOLUME button on her iPod, raising it so that the hip hop bass throbs almost painfully in her ears.
She never used to like this kind of music, but lately the angry, rhythmic lyrics appeal to her. Lately a lot of things appeal to her that never did before.
Which kind of scares her—not that she’d admit it to anyone but herself.
The school year’s almost over, though.
Yeah. And as soon as it is, Mom’s going to haul her down to the beach.
Away from her friends.
Away from Dad.
Away from Heath Pickering.
Standing in her kitchen, eyes squeezed shut, Cam can see the girl pretty clearly: elfin features, upturned nose, straight, wispy, long blond hair. It’s hard to make out the color of her eyes, though—they’re tear-filled, and she keeps squeezing them closed.
She’s about thirteen years old—maybe fourteen, but small for her age.
What else?
She’s filthy, caked in dirt, huddled on the ground. She’s clutching a purple backpack and wearing what looks like a school uniform. One tail of her once-white blouse hangs below her navy vest, and her legs are scraped and bloodied between her blue knee socks and short pleated plaid skirt. Blue and green plaid—Black Watch? Is that what it’s called?
Around her neck, at the open collar of her blouse, is a silver chain with some kind of small, triangular black pendant hanging from it.
Watching the child’s narrow little body heave with silent sobs, Cam clenches her hands so hard that what’s left of her methodically bitten fingernails dig painfully into her palms.
Her own saliva is tainted by the metallic taste of the little girl’s fear; her thoughts by the little girl’s frantic introspection:
Oh, please, God, don’t let me die. Please.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…
What if she never gets to go back home?
Home…
The girl’s eyes squeeze tightly shut.
She’s picturing it, Cam realizes. Picturing her home.
Yes, СКАЧАТЬ