"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - What used To Be Audrey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

"I don't know," I said. Had something heard my prayers? I used
to pray a car would hit Audrey or fall over a cliff or get run
down by a buffalo stampede. When she was particularly nasty to
me, I imagined horrible things happening to her: aliens
dissecting her, the kids she baby-sat for tying her up;
sometimes I just dreamed she was smaller and weaker than I was.
But I had never imagined this.
"Why would you -- Sherry -- why?" Mom said.
"Oh, Mom, you don't know what Audrey's like. You don't see what
she does to me. You just see the perfect manners and the good
grades and the way she helps around the house, the smiles she
saves for you. You don't have to live in the same room with
her. She never turns those smiles on me. Living with her is
like -- like living with cancer."
"Oh, Sherry," said Mom. She put her hands on her cheeks. "How
can you talk that way about your own sister? Audrey never --
no." She shook her head. Her eyes looked like wet green stones.
"Audrey was my good girl." She looked at Wutba, who set down
its mug and looked back.
Suddenly she was Audrey again. "Mama!" she wailed. "I'm in a
dark place with things biting! It's soooo cooooold...."
Mom jumped up, her chair crashing to the floor behind her, and
went to Audrey. She put her arms around her. "Oh, baby. Oh,
baby," she said, and Audrey made sobbing noises, but I saw her
green eyes over Mom's shoulder. She was staring at me. She
looked meaner than she had the day she burned the back of my
hand with a cigarette.
I crossed my fingers and closed my eyes and wished Wutba would
come back, wished it so hard I started to see purple stars on
the inside of my eyelids. My hands felt funny, as if something
was pooling in my fingertips. The teakettle screamed. My eyes
jerked open. I looked at Audrey and saw her eyes had gone
golden. She was hugging Mom and grinning. I started breathing
again. I turned and took the kettle off the burner, and then
poured water for Mom's coffee, the warm brown smell from the
instant relaxing me like a promise that things would return to
Wutba-normal.
"I'm so glad you're back, Audrey," said Mom. Then she looked at
Audrey's face and saw Wutba's eyes. She screamed.
"Don't be like that," said Wutba. "I won't hurt you."
"You're torturing my daughter!"
"Nonsense. The girl is made of lies," said Wutba. "She's
perfectly comfortable where she is."
"I don't believe you! She was in pain. I heard her."
Wutba smiled. It made an almost-Audrey sneer. "You begin to
understand me," it said.
"Is Audrey really in pain?" I asked.
"Perhaps," said Wutba.
I-thought about that. I thought about all the times I had
wished Audrey would hurt, and hurt bad. For a little while I