Free The Worst Thing I've Done by Ursula Hegi Page B

disease. Or choked. Or—”
    â€œOkay, I have a better one. A better worse one. Day before yesterday—” He pointed to his new leather jacket on the blue glass pegs by the door. Butter-smooth and so light brown it was almost blond.
    â€œTell me.” Annie stretched.
    â€œI changed the price tag.”
    â€œYou what?”
    â€œI peeled the sticker from a sale jacket.”
    â€œYou told me the jacket was half-price.”
    â€œI did not.”
    â€œYou told me—”
    â€œI told you I got it half-price.”
    She slid aside so abruptly that his head bounced on the couch.
    â€œThey would have marked it down eventually.”
    â€œYour logic…sucks.”
    â€œSo do I win?” he tried, knowing he shouldn’t have told her. Still…hard to know with Annie ahead of time. She’d be clowning around…then slap you down with schoolmarm values.
    â€œYou could send a check to the store. For the price difference.”
    â€œNo way.”
    â€œOr you could pack it up and send it there with a note…anonymously.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt was stealing, Mason.”
    â€œCorrect. If I had done it.”
    â€œStop lying to me.”
    â€œI made it up. To see if I could win.”
    She stared into his eyes as if believing she could find the truth there.
    So he put it there. Without blinking. Held her gaze. Imagined truth in his eyes and shut out the high he’d felt when he’d switched tags and paid half-price, when he’d told the salesclerk he’d wear it home and walked from the store with the jacket so light that it didn’t drag down his shoulders.
    â€œListen, Annie, the worst thing I’ve done today is make up that story.”
    â€œSwear?”
    â€œSwear.” He scooted toward her on the couch, resettled his head on her knees. “It doesn’t come close to what you did on the train in Morocco.”
    A corner of her mouth moved upward.
    â€œIs that still the worst thing you’ve done, Annie?”

    W HEN SHE nodded, he saw her in Tangier, enraged as she bought a huge black scarf. Men had been staring at her wherever she went because she wasn’t veiled. To Mason, it was exciting, but she didn’t get it. Twisted this scarf around her head and shoulders as if she wanted to make herself disappear. Rushed ahead through cramped passages of the Medina, lined with stalls where you could buy orchids, bloody sheeps’ heads, clothing, transistor radios, live roosters, jewelry, spices…
    â€œWait for us,” Jake shouted.
    A man with a bicycle shoved past Annie, sheeps’ stomachs slung across the handlebars.
    Their travel book had pictures of the Medina but no descriptions of the smells: blood and dust and sweetness and excrement. Even here, Mason could smell the dye vats they’d seen the day before, where boys with dye-stained legs were stomping in caldrons. Young boys. At the pottery wheels too, wearing face masks because the dust made it hard to breathe.
    They ate a meal of lamb and chickpeas at a restaurant where belly dancers performed on a center stage. Unexpected in this country where women were veiled, where coffee shops were for men only.
    On the street to the hotel, Annie held on to Mason’s arm.
    â€œI want to get out of here tonight,” she said.
    â€œTomorrow,” Jake told her. “We’ve already paid for tonight at the hotel.” He kept track of how much they could spend to have their money last.
    Hustlers pressed against them, tried to sell hashish.
    â€œYou stay away from me!” Annie raised both hands to stop the one closest to her.
    â€œYou are a hard, hard woman,” the man hissed. Hollow cheeks. Eyes burning with hate. “Very sick.”
    At the hotel Annie insisted they leave Tangier that evening. Mason loved the city, wanted to stay. And Jake asked Annie to wait at least till morning because he’d washed out his clothes and they