Swansong Read Online Free Page A

inside.”
    The apartment is hardwood, scantily furnished.  The only lights are the lights on the ceiling, and they look as if they belong in a studio.  The couch is small and gray.  The walls are white and bare.  I scan the doors opposite me: bedroom, bathroom, bedroom.  The kitchen must be off to the side.
    I want to cry.  I want to say Thank you , again and again.  I want to go home.
     
    * * * * *
     
    My bedroom has no windows—the first difference between the old and the new.  A plain lamp stands on the tiny table next to the plain bed.  All my paint cans and blank bulk canvases are stacked neatly next to the rolling closet door.  I wonder why Judas asked me about the painting if he already knew.  Maybe he was trying to make conversation.
    I sit on my bed.  I change my mind.  I stand up.
    “Jude,” I call out.  I walk out into the sitting room.  “Do you want me to make—”
    He’s sitting on the floor, the tiny television turned on.  I catch a glimpse of the screen.  A wrecked blue car, crushed into a compact heap.  Words scrolling across the bottom of the image.
    The strength drains from my legs; the warmth drains from my face.  Judas reaches over and shuts the TV off.  He jumps up.
    “Let’s not watch the news for a while,” he decides.
    I make lunch in the kitchen, a shabby room so sad, so gray, I wonder how it is that anyone managed to live here before us, let alone Judas.  The cold from the linoleum floor tiles rises right through the soles of my shoes.  My fingers shake when I cut the bread and slice the tomatoes.  I wanted to give my hands something to do.
    “What are you doing?” Judas asks.  He sticks his head in the kitchen.
    “You’re not allergic or anything—?”  The humming from the rusty refrigerator cuts through my thoughts.  I think I should probably go grocery shopping; Judas doesn’t have any butter.
    “You already made lunch.”
    I drop the knife to the counter with a clatter.  I look in the sink, lackluster and aluminum.  Two plates sit in the basin.  One knife.
    “Oh, God,” I manage to say.  It feels like I don’t have enough breath even for that.  “What’s wrong with me?”
    Judas walks into the kitchen.  He grips my shoulders.  I want to cry and cry and never stop.  I want to hide my face in his shirt.
    “It’s going to be okay,” Judas tells me.  But his voice is empty, like he doesn’t really know, like he just wants to encourage me, and—who is he?  Isn’t he a stranger?  “I’m filling out your prescriptions.  They’ll help.”
    “How many do I have to take…?”
    “Six.”
    “Six—”  My throat convulses.
    “Come on,” Judas says.  “Go sit down.  I’ll put this stuff away.”
    “Am I going to get better?”  He doesn’t know.  How could he know?
    “You will.”  How could he know?
    “Mom and Dad are gone.  My best friend—”
    “Go sit down.  I promise you, I’ll take care of you.”
    I trail out into the sitting room, gliding like a ghost.  Everything feels so fake.  This can’t be me.  This can’t be happening.
    I sit on the couch.  Judas sits with me a moment later.  He watches me carefully, like an ironworker sitting on top of a girder.  I get the feeling he’s fine-tuning his argument before he delivers it.
    “You think you’ll be ready for school in a month?”
    That must be his argument.
    “I don’t know,” I mumble.  Cavalieri is big, but I can’t imagine sitting down in homeroom class without a Jocelyn sitting next to me.  I can’t imagine answering questions about how she—about how—
    —I don’t know how I can take tests if I’m forgetting things every five minutes—
    “When your social worker shows up,” Judas says, “I’m getting you a therapist.”
    My head shoots up.  “I don’t need therapy.”  A social worker?  “Why a social worker?”
    Judas smiles.  One side of his face doesn’t smile with him.  That scar at the corner of his mouth—the