The Spider's Web by Coel Margaret

Author:Coel, Margaret
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

17

VICKY STARTED THE Jeep and left the gear in park. Sunlight splayed the administration building. Behind the windows on the right, John O’Malley had probably gone back to his desk. She felt a sharp pang of guilt over what she had said. After all, there were times when she felt like the outsider, and he was the insider. He cared about the people as much as she did. They had always been on the same team, and that was what had stung her, she knew. She had expected him to see Marcy Morrison as she did: a young woman caught up in something dreadful, with consequences that were more serious than she realized. But something about Marcy Morrison bothered him. She had sensed that and lashed out. She slammed a fist against the edge of the steering wheel. She wanted John O’Malley to be with her, on her team.

And yet he wasn’t the only one with misgivings. What was it Ella had said? Maybe she had something to do with it? Other people on the rez probably thought the same thing. She closed her eyes against the sharp fact that what she had said in the office was often true: sooner or later, outsiders were turned upon. She had never meant to say it to John O’Malley.

She backed into Circle Drive, then shifted into forward and drove to the guesthouse. She stopped next to the pickup. It was quiet except for the sound of the wind swooshing through the wild grass and moving in the cottonwood branches. She was about to knock on the door when it opened a few inches and Marcy peered around the edge. “I didn’t know you were coming,” she said.

“We need to talk.” Vicky waited, and when the girl didn’t move, Vicky placed her hand on the door and pushed it open. Shadows swallowed the living room—tee shirts, jeans, towels tossed over the sofa and chair, bottles of fingernail polish and lotions crammed on the little table. “We can talk outside, if you prefer,” she said.

Marcy started forward, and Vicky stepped sideways, making room for the girl on the stoop. Marcy pulled the door shut and folded onto the top step. She leaned forward, hugging her bare knees. A silver watch with tiny diamonds that Vicky hadn’t noticed her wearing before looked like a bracelet on her thin arm. She wore her cutoff jeans, ragged at the edges, and a white tee shirt that outlined the knobs of her spine. She was barefoot, her feet turned inward, pigeon-toed. Bright red polish shone on her toenails. “Why are you here?” she said. “The SOBs that killed Ned got arrested and want to drag me into it?”

Vicky sat down beside her. The question came like a bolt of lightning. “Why would you think that?” she said.

The girl shifted toward her. Her eyes were dull, encased in black bruises. “Isn’t that what everybody’s saying? Everybody hates me here. They want me sent to prison for something I never did.

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