"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - F1 - The Thread That Binds The Bones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

of showers onto waiting hands, and past the mirror that still hosted a hundred anxious faces touching
themselves up, or watching something other than themselves while they talked. Beyond the cloud of
emotional memory he saw himself for an instant, startled as always that he had grown up, and up, and
out; though he was twenty-nine, inside him there was still a skinny, blue-eyed, black-haired kid waiting at
a train station for an uncertain reception as some new relative came to pick him up.
He parked the mop bucket under the wall by the window and went back to fetch the toilet-cleaning
tools from his cart in the hallway, and when he pushed through the door again, he heard whispers.
тАФTwo more.
тАФWhen?
тАФSoon.
тАЬWhere?тАЭ he said, then shook his head.
тАФTwo more.
тАФIтАЩm tired.
тАФNow and forever.
Working in an ammonia haze, Tom scrubbed out the sink, and then the toilets, wiping off the seats
and leaving them up. He emptied napkin repositories and trash, restocked toilet paper and paper towels,
and tried to ignore the whispers. For almost twelve years he had kept them away, but in the last two
weeks, he had started hearing them again, and he couldnтАЩt shake them out of his head anymore the way
he had managed to ever since high school graduation. The headaches had also returned.
And the visions.
Having cleaned everything above ground, he was ready to mop. He slopped the mop in the water,
then put it in the wringer and pulled the squeeze lever, keeping his eyes away from the shadow in the
corner next to the window. He started mopping in the furthest stall, then along the wall, and finally he had
to look at the shadow as he approached it. It was a huddled girl, wearing a white sweater and a plaid
circle skirt, her dark hair bouffed up, pushed back with a plastic headband, and flipped under at the
ends. She looked toward him through harlequin glasses and held out her wrists, displaying the cuts across
them.
тАФHe brought me here to the dance and went home with her, she whispered. Her face squinched up.
тАФIt was the first time anybody ever asked me out.
тАЬBoy, you teenagers,тАЭ said Tom. The way her eyes didnтАЩt quite meet his led him to assume this was
one of the nonresponsive repeaters, stuck pattern ghosts who just said the same thing over and over,
without paying attention to what was going on around them. тАЬDoesnтАЩt take much, does it?тАЭ
Her eyes widened. She rose, hands clenching into fistsтАФthere was no blood, not on her sweater or
her skirt, just the red lines across her wrists, like stripes painted on with nail polishтАФand stamped her
foot.
тАФItтАЩs the most important thing I ever did!
тАЬThatтАЩs sad,тАЭ he said.
She came and slapped him, momentum carrying her on through him. He shivered, not from a physical
sensation of cold, but from the feelings of frustration and longing and anger and hate that animated her
still, after all these years. The feelings were a sour-sweet taste on his tongue, a cold blade along his spine,
a tingle on the back of his neck.
He spat in the sink, casting out her residue. Years ago he had hugged a ghost, invited her in, and she
had melted into him and strengthened him; now she was braided so smoothly inside him that he no longer
thought of her as someone separate. She had taught him that most ghosts werenтАЩt real people, just clots
of strong emotion left behind by violent acts, sometimes even the residue cast off by people still alive. He
had learned not to fear ghosts, but he didnтАЩt often like them.
When he had started hearing the whispers again, he sought for his internal ghost, wanting to ask her
questions about what was going on now, why the whispers had come back, but the only person who
answered his call was himself.
He missed her.