Cosmo Read Online Free Page B

– forced her to return the expression. Like so many of her public days of meeting and greeting, today demanded an unnatural amount of smiling. If it went on much longer, she’d have to duck into a restroom and apply some Vaseline to her teeth. She forced herself to return the women’s smiles for only a second before looking away, trying to orient herself in this swirl of activity, the sudden hush that fell as the locals noticed that a tour was underway – that a seemingly extraterrestrial quintet of striking, richly garbed women had entered behind one of the Mercy ’s most senior officials.
    Croft addressed the room in a slow, careful-sounding Vietnamese. Immediately the women applauded, shifting excitedly in their chairs, rising to their feet.
    â€˜I’ve just let them know who you are,’ Croft said, above the claps.
    The girls waved back modestly, but with a certain magisterial ­practice.
    â€˜Many of these women speak English,’ Croft said. ‘I’ll let you visit with the children; I’m sure a quick hello would brighten their day. They’d love to get a picture with you, too.’
    Crystle watched Croft drift toward a woman and get assaulted with hugs, a quick peck on the cheek. The girls were left to mingle and meet with the recovering kids, looking uncomfortable for only a cold snap of a second before they broke apart and attended to the various groups. Crystle found her stomach and bearing, feeling for the right mixture of sympathy, the right expression of interest. Closest to her sat a woman in her late twenties, holding a bald baby in her lap. Crystle approached and bowed. On the nearby bed sat a boy wearing a Spider-Man T, drawstring shorts, tiny Velcro sandals. He was about nine, small and thin, his knees scraped and scabbing. Faced with no other choice, Crystle really looked , and saw his mouth puckered with a swollen red line of stitching running at an angle to his right nostril, the right and left sides of his upper lip fused in an uneven stripe.
    â€˜Hell o ,’ Crystle said, after a beat, drawing out the o .
    â€˜Hell ooh ,’ said the woman, imitating her tone. Crystle counted a few seconds, unsure of what to do. The woman reached beneath her seat and pulled up a manila folder, which opened to reveal a large glossy picture of the boy on the bed, obviously pre-surgery: his face rent by a massive, disfiguring hole in his palate, yellow baby teeth crowding around the gap in the bone and skin. A successful surgery, then, Crystle guessed.
    â€˜Wow!’ she said, nodding, looking up at the boy. ‘It’s so wonderful …’
    â€˜This Huyhn,’ the woman said, ‘my son.’
    â€˜Hello, Huyhn,’ Crystle said, reaching out to touch the tip of the boy’s sandal. ‘My name is Crystle. It’s nice to meet you.’ The boy smiled.
    It really is incredible , she thought: the boy wouldn’t have been able to eat or speak or have a girlfriend – so many things would have been withheld. She felt a genuine sense of pity, worried suddenly that she had cringed. How cruel God could be, she thought, considering the boy’s fate. How many people born into ugliness, into misfortune. But improving this depressing turn of mind – this wide and irreconcilable gulf between her life and his, between her life and those of her Missouri City peers, the fat and forgotten – she felt again a sense of pride, not for who she happened to be or from where she came, but for what she was representing. If these were the sorts of missions she’d be asked to represent or promote as Miss Universe … well, she could live with that. Watching the United States, the nations of the First World, operating for a force of peace. Curing children of maladies – it was almost too good to be true. Humanitarian work held a subtle but not insignificant allure; she considered the ways in which her motivational work – that