Free Forecast by Janette Turner Hospital Page B

pulls a chair across the room to the broken window, climbs on the chair, and leans out through the empty frame. He is straining after Francesca. He smells the rich damp perfume she leaves in her wake. ‘Is it the best thing?’ he asks plaintively. ‘Is it?’
    â€˜I don’t know either,’ Leah says.

Weather Maps
    She’s black, I’m white, but we’ve been blood sisters since we were twelve years old. We did it with barbecue skewers – the thin kind used for threading shrimp, not the thick kebabs kind – jabbing our thumbs and rubbing them together and sucking our intermixed blood.
    â€˜That didn’t even hurt,’ she said.
    â€˜We’re bionic women. That’s why.’
    She grinned. ‘Bionic women.’ She liked that. ‘Nothing can hurt us.’
    We had compared welts. She had X’s on her back and buttocks, I had weather maps on my legs. That was why I always wore jeans no matter how hot it was. You could see storm fronts moving up my calves to the soft underside of my knees. You could trace isobars.
    â€˜It’s better when you do it to yourself,’ she said carefully. She waited. She wanted to see if I understood. Then she said casually, as thoughcommenting on a preference for broccoli over green beans, ‘Razor blades are good.’
    Our eyes met then and something electric and thrilling passed between us.
    â€˜You can make whatever patterns you want,’ I agreed, ‘and it’s private.’
    She frowned slightly, thinking about this. ‘You can’t always keep it private, but it’s still better. Because no one else is doing it to you.’ We were hardly breathing, we weren’t even blinking, just keeping watch, but I could hear my heart and hers, loud as kitchen timers, loud as the band teacher’s metronome, far louder than our voices which were barely above a whisper. We didn’t want the guards to hear. We didn’t want anyone else in the visitors’ room listening in.
    â€˜We make secret weather,’ I said. ‘It only rains in side.’
    â€˜Even though it makes him madder.’
    â€˜Your dad?’
    â€˜Stepdad. My mom’s boyfriend.’ She studied me thoughtfully. ‘Does yours make you take off all your clothes when he punishes you?’
    I did not say yes, but she heard me anyway.
    â€˜I wonder why they do that,’ she said.
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    That was not true. I did know why, and of course she did too, but I didn’t want to talk aboutit any more than she did, not then, not now, not ever. This was why, when I made my own weather maps, I did them in hidden places like the inside of my thighs, high up, or the inside of my upper arms. Clothes on or off, I had what you could call cloud cover. ‘Where I do it myself, it doesn’t matter,’ I told her. ‘It’s camouflaged. He doesn’t notice.’
    â€˜What about the blood?’ The way her brows knit, I knew this was a problem for her.
    â€˜I mop it up with washcloths and tissues then throw them out.’
    â€˜Mine always sees,’ she sighed. ‘Then he whips me again.’
    â€˜Where do you do it?’
    â€˜Belly.’
    â€˜You should try this.’ I lifted one arm high and pulled at the front of my T-shirt so she could see. ‘Eye of the hurricane,’ I said, showing my armpit.
    She winced. ‘That is real ugly weather.’
    â€˜Category 5.’
    â€˜That’s got to hurt.’
    â€˜You know it doesn’t.’
    â€˜But it’s infected. There’s pus.’
    She had to know that that was how you drained off all the sewage and crap, but I said it again, annoyed with her. ‘You know damn well it doesn’t hurt.’
    â€˜Oh shit,’ she said. ‘We are so fucked up. Are we fucked up or what?’
    â€˜We’re fucked,’ I conceded. ‘Call 911. Code Red.’
    She put an imaginary cell