"Lippman, Laura - Every Secret Thing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lippman Laura)

Special thanks to Sally Fellows and, by extension, the virtual clan to
which we belong, for encouraging me to write this book.

July 17, seven years ago.

Prologue

They were barefoot when they were sent home, their dripping feet
leaving prints that evaporated almost instantly, as if they had never
been there at all. Had it been possible to retrace their literal
steps, as so many would try to do in the days that followed, the trail
would have led from the wading pool area, where the party tables had
been staked out with aqua Mylar balloons, past the snack bar, up the
stairs, and to the edge of the parking lot. And each print would have
been smaller than the last losing first the toes, then the narrow
connector along the arch, the heels, and finally the baby-fat balls of
their feet until there was nothing left.

At the curb, they sat to put on their shoes sneakers for Ronnie,
brand-new jellies for Alice, who used whatever money came her way to
stay current with the fifth-grade fashion trends at St. William of
York. Jellies were the thing to have that summer, on July 17, seven
years ago.

The parking lot's macadam shone black, reminding Alice of a bubbling,
boiling sea in a fairy tale, of a landscape that could vaporize upon
touch.

"It's like the desert in Oz," she said, thinking of the hand-me-down
books rescued from her mother's childhood.

"There's no desert in Oz," Ronnie said.

"Yes, there is, later, in the other books, there's this desert that
burns you up "

"It's not a book," Ronnie said. "It's a movie."

Alice decided not to contradict her, although Ronnie usually ceded to
Alice when it came to matters of books and facts and school. These
were the things that Alice thought of as knowledge, a word that she saw
in blazing blue letters, for it had stared at her all year from the
bulletin board in their fifth-grade classroom. "A wise man is strong;
yea, a man of knowledge increases strength." The A papers of the week
were posted beneath that proverb, and Alice had grieved, privately, any
week she failed to make the board. Ronnie, who never made it, always
said she didn't care.

But Ronnie was in one of her dark moods today, long past the point
where anyone could tell her anything.