Free The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti Page B

wasn’t a romance,” I tried.
    “And yet your face is flushed.”
    I’m sure it went even darker after that. The book
wasn’t
dangerous, it wasn’t even particularly interesting; it was about a girl who learned how to knit! But now I felt as though I was hiding porn in my schoolbag.
    He took a long look at me and didn’t like what he saw. “You
were
reading something bad.”
    “I wouldn’t,” I said, aiming for reconciliation. In my voice I heard the empty hopeful smile of a child, and stopped, sick at myself. It didn’t matter anyway, because my father wasn’t listening.
    “My daughter! You’re supposed to be better than that,” he said, with real distress. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but I know it was real, because of his voice. It was as bothered as it got whenever there was a spoon out of place on the dining table, or Mom spoke too loudly on the phone, or he caught me opening my window. “Do you realize how people will point fingers? They’ll
laugh
. You’re at the ugly age when people make fools of themselves, and fall into all sorts of degrading mistakes—”
    The memory of running wildly through the grass with Sangris shot through my mind, but it didn’t seem liberating anymore. I tried not to look guilty.
    “If you’re all I raised you to be,” my father said, focusing on the road, “you’ll keep yourself above rebuke.”
    “Sorry,” I mumbled, to end things.
    We fell back into silence, but it wasn’t a blank silence anymore. It was thick and prickly and I felt as though we were both wondering what the other was thinking.
    I’d been so obedient for so long . . . but my
no
in the souk had flashed through the cracks, and now he was imagining a deep and concealed rebelliousness burning beneath my surface. I wondered if he’d always be suspicious of me now.
    I had a quiet shriveling sensation inside. Heart curling up like the ferns in India, which close their leaves when touched.
    When he spoke again, he sounded stiff.
    “You should feel lucky you have a father who shows such concern for your welfare. Not all fathers do, and where do their daughters end up?” He made a dismissive noise with his mouth.
“Pfft
.
”
    That was where they ended up. In
Pfft
.
    I only nodded.
    Wordlessly, I pressed my nose to the window and watched the painful blue sky roll past. I didn’t think of Sangris. I allowed my thoughts to approach him, in a roundabout way, and then at the last moment, just before I saw his alert yellow eyes, I jerked myself away.
    If
Pfft
were a place, I thought, I probably deserved to be there.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    In Which Sangris Makes a Proposal
     
    The car stopped and I got out. I didn’t own any house keys, so I had to wait until my father opened the front door and allowed me to escape from the oppressive heat, into a long, narrow hallway with cool white tiles on the floor. Mom was nowhere in sight. Both my father and I stooped to take off our shoes near the door. Then he disappeared to his computer and I hurried to my bedroom down the hall.
    My room was painted yellow—no, not the same shade as Sangris’s eyes—his were the bright yellow of those Danger signs you sometimes see on the side of the road—this yellow was more subdued, more feminine. Creamy yellow. But the paint in the corners of the room was beginning to peel in the dryness of the air.
    There was my bed in a corner, surrounded by its fortress of books. I lay down and skimmed furtively until I finished the book I had started in the car. It was short, and just as dull as I had remembered.
    “Frenenqer,” my father said from down the hall.
    He had a certain way of calling me, just saying my name without raising his voice, as though he was sure I would hear.
    It was like he’d
sensed
me finishing the book.
    I scuttled over.
    He was holding the phone in one hand, switching it off with an efficient click, and frowning at me. “I’ve decided to deny Anju’s request,” he said. Like a