Free The Lonely by Ainslie Hogarth Page A

herself perform death so she could get better and better at it.
    The problem is, you can’t fake dead hands. That invisible something that fills dead or sleeping hands, making them appear strange and inanimate, is impossible to imitate. The Mother couldn’t do it in the bathtub on Sunday nights, though she tried so hard to imitate it, and we couldn’t do it in our game.
    After a while The Mother got wise to this misuse of her precious lipsticks, which, incidentally, was wearing them out and making them flat so she couldn’t use them properly. She told me that we had to stop or she’d take them away and hide them in a closet somewhere far beyond our reach. But it was fun while it lasted.
    One afternoon, before we were found out, I walked in on Julia lying still on the floor in front of the mirror, covered in fatal slashes of Fire Engine Red. I sat down on the edge of the tub and looked down at her face. With her eyes still closed she said:
    â€œSometimes I feel like I’m disappearing.”
    She looked particularly pale and her clothes hung over her prone body like a sheet over a corpse at a crime scene. Her lips had taken on the whitish quality of someone who’d been trapped in a meat locker for a couple of hours, and beneath her eyes hung hammocks of bluish-gray skin. I’ll never forget the way that her face looked on this day, which is probably why it’s this face of hers that keeps flashing in my head as I lie under this big, stupid rock.
    I didn’t really know how to respond to her statement, so I said,
    â€œYou know, you really look like a corpse right now. How did you do that?”
    â€œI’ve been practicing.”
    I furrowed my brow at her, smiling. Our inside joke.
    â€œYour face, though, it’s all blue.
    â€œI’m dead, Easter. I drowned this afternoon. Had a seizure throwing up and fell-face first into the toilet.”
    â€œWhy were you throwing up?”
    â€œBecause I’m feeling sad, Easter, that’s why.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause one day you’ll lose me and then you won’t be special anymore. You’ll be just like everyone else.”

I’m You
    Shortness of breath. That’s one of the first signs of kidney failure. And I’m pretty sure I had it. Kidney failure that is. And shortness of breath for that matter. My cigar-butt stumps were almost black, and as shiny and smooth and full and firm as concord grapes, and the color was reaching up into my shorts.
    In a weird way I kind of felt like Snow White or Cinderella or one of those other princesses who are surrounded by woodland creatures, so good and sweet and special that even cute little animals are drawn to me and show me, only me, how helpful and aware they are. If only Lev could walk up right when a little blue bird is fluttering down upon one of my elegantly outstretched fingers.
    But actually I didn’t want him to find me. And I didn’t want anyone else to find me either. I was fine with this kind of death, bleeding slowly. I wanted it for myself. I liked the smell of The Woods and sounds of the leaves and the way more and more squirrels seemed to be growing comfortable with me. Plus I had nowhere else to go—I couldn’t face Mrs. Bellows after last night, or any of the girls who’d been in the Craft Room. And The Terrible Thing was in The Tooth House. So I might as well just live as a ghost in The Woods. Be as unreal as Julia. Two strange girls living in the strange, unreal world, so in it we’d actually be normal. Normal and together, an impossible combination for us in the regular, real world.
    I ground my shoulders deeper into the forest floor, moving them in wide circles to work my way in. I dipped my hands in the pools of blood at my sides and rubbed them on my face. That way I would look far worse off than I already was and maybe some stranger walking by wouldn’t rush or anything to try and save me.
    And then the