"Nixon, Joan Lowery - The Other Side Of Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nixon Joan Lowery)

A picture appears. I am standing in our backyard. I'm listening, wondering what it was I heard. "Mom?" I call as I walk toward the porch steps. "Are you all right?"
But the door suddenly slams open, hitting the siding on the house with a clatter, and someone races out. He pauses on the second step as we stare at each other. But I can't see his face!
"Show me your face," I say aloud. "You're someone I know. I remember that much!"
The face is blank. But there's something in his hand. It's a gun. He points it at me. I can't move. I can't make a sound. I want to cry out, "Mom!"
Mom.
Some part of my mind has clutched and hidden what Dad told me about Mom; but now his words spill out, and I have to face them. I roll onto my stomach and cry, the pillow stuffed against my mouth. I cry until no more tears will come, and dry, hiccupping shudders shake my body. The soggy pillow smells sour, so I push it to the floor. I'll never see my mother again.
The door snaps open, and a tall, angular nurse, who matches the crispness of her uniform, strides to my bed. "Well, hi," she says. "I'm Alice." I can tell that she's taking in the pillow on the floor and my swollen eyes, but she doesn't react until all the temperature-pulse business has been accomplished. She checks under the bandage on my hip, makes a note on her chart, puts it down, and for the first time looks at me as though I were a person. "How about a shower before breakfast?" she asks. "It will help you feel a lot better."
"Yesterday I got kind of dizzy when I tried to sit up."
"That was yesterday, and that was the medication."
"Have I got out of bed to take showers before?"
She smiles. "Every day, and I'm usually the one who's given them to you."
My face is hot. I'm embarrassed that I blushed, but she doesn't seem to notice. The shower does make me feel better on the outside. I hold my face up to the water, feeling its sting on my forehead and scalp.
But nothing has helped on the inside. Maybe I can't be helped, because a hollow has been carved in there, and inside that hollow there are no feelings at all.
Alice, making sure I'm steady on my feet, leaves me to towel-dry my hair. She hums under her breath as she makes my bed.
There's a small mirror over the sink in my bathroom. I drop the towel and study myself in the mirror. It's the weirdest sensation. I feel that I'm looking at Donna the way Donna looked when I was thirteen. The person in that mirror is different from the one I was used to seeing. The face is thinner with shadows under the cheekbones. I remember when my best friend, Jan, and I would stick our faces toward the mirror and suck in our cheeks and say, "This is what we'll look like when we grow up and are beautiful!"
I wonder how the eyes in the mirror can droop with so much pain when I feel absolutely empty inside.
Alice brings me a short gown sprigged with blue violets. "The nurses thought you'd like something pretty," she says, adding, "Norma picked it out."
I don't know what to say. I think I mumble, "Thank you."
She glances at me from the corners of her eyes. The shyness doesn't match her efficient look. "We're all so glad that you recovered. We really care about our patients, especially the young ones. Especially you, Stacy. You've got most of your life ahead of you, and weЧ" She stops, and the briskness takes over. "Your sister's going to bring some of her clothes for you."
"Don't I have any clothes here? What did I wear?"
"During the day we put you into cotton knit jumpsuits, which you could wear when the therapist helped you ride the exercise bike and use the other equipment." She reaches into the small closet, pulls out a shapeless gray thing, and holds it up, its arms and legs dangling. It looks like an ad showing what happens when you use the wrong brand of soap.
All I can say is "Yeech!"
She laughs and tucks me between the stiff sheets, cranks my bed until I'm sitting upright, and hands me a hairbrush so that I can brush my hair.
Breakfast is brought in, and while I'm munching through the eggs' curly brown edges, a girl appears in the open doorway.
She looks at me as though she were afraid of me, and for a moment I don't know who she is.
"Stacy," she says, still in the doorway, "I'm Jan. Can I come in?"
"Jan?" I know I'm sitting there with my mouth open, but it's hard to believe that this tall auburn-haired girl in the pink, tailored shirt and tight jeans and makeup that looks like a cosmetic ad is my friend Jan Briley.
Her knees seem a little stiffЧor maybe it's the jeans. She shoves a small package toward me, backs off, and perches on the edge of the armchair across from the bed. "It's not much," she says. "Just some lipstick and eye shadow and mascara and stuff I thought you'd need."
"Thanks." This isn't Jan. It can't be Jan. I shiver and push the breakfast tray away.
"You lookЧyou look good, Stacy. How do you feel?"
"Okay."
"You'll feel lots better when your makeup's on and you've done something with your hair. Do you have hot rollers?" She looks embarrassed. Her fingers are white from gripping the arms of the chair. "Of course you wouldn't have them here. I should have brought mine, I guess."
"It's okay." I look at her hair closely. "You never used to wear your hair like that. You used to wad it up in those big brown barrettes to keep it out of your eyes when we played baseball. Do you still play on the team?"
"Team? Oh, no." She gives a funny little laugh and says, "There's a mirror in the package. Why not get it out?"
"What for?"
"So you can put on your makeup."
"Mom lets meЧlet me wear lipstick, but I don't know what to do with the eye stuff."
"Oh. I didn't think about that. I just take makeup for granted, like brushing my teeth or wearing shoes."
"How long have you worn real makeup?"
"Well gosh, Stacy, for ages. After all, I'm seventeen." She pauses. "And so are you."
I shake my head. "I've got to get used to that. I still feel like I'm thirteen. I feel like everything took place yesterday."
"I'm sorry about what happenedЧall of it. When they took you to the hospital and thought you might die, I wanted to die too. I couldn't bear to lose you. And then last night your father called me, and I couldn't believe it. I just sat right down on the floor and cried and cried, I was so glad you were going to be all right again." Jan leans forward, forearms resting on her knees. "Do you want to talk about it?"
I can't help it, but I feel as though she were one of Donna's friends, not mine. It's hard to answer. "I haven't remembered all of it yet."
"Oh," she says, and looks relieved. I don't know what I expected. Sympathy? Maybe even curiosity. This Jan doesn't want to know what I could tell her.
I have no idea what to say to her. I guess, from the way she starts squirming as though the chair had lumps in it, that she feels the same way. This is my best friend, Jan, to whom I told even my secret thoughts, and now I'm blank.
But I make a desperate stab. "What are things like at school?"
Jan sits upright, looking thankful, as though she'd just passed a math test she hadn't studied for. "Oh, same old grind. SuzieЧyou remember Suzie LindlyЧ anyhow, poor Suzie got married last week to a guy who is really out of it. I mean totally out. Only everybody knows she had to."
"Why did she have to?"
Jan blinks a couple of times, her mouth open. "Honestly, Stacy. You know. Because she's pregnant."
"Oh." I feel myself blushing again, and I'm mad at myself for being so dumb, for being a little kid.