Read Online Little Red Lies by Julie Johnston - Free Book Online

complete bloodbath at the end.
    I walk along with my head down, thinking hard about the best way to end my play, until at last I see that the only answer is to abandon it and write one instead about a madwoman who tries to murder her family. I’m so deep in thought, I don’t notice that I’ve missed my corner and am now about to pass Woolworths.
Good
. A little bag of candies will get my brain working again.
    Inside, I stand at the candy counter at the front of the store, pouring over the selection. Mary Foley’s counter, where she sells cosmetics—including lipstick with enticing names—is near the back. I should go say hi to her, but I don’t. I can see she’s busy chatting with some of her girlfriends.
    “May I help you?” the salesgirl at the candy counter asks.
    Chewing my lower lip, I mull over the selection. I need to make the absolute best choice—peanut brittle or Liquorice Allsorts. “Liquorice,” I say, and just as the girl is about to scoop some into a paper bag, I say, “Wait. I can’t make up my mind.”
    She puts down her scoop. “Take your own sweet time, hon, I got nothin’ better to do.”
    I stare hard at the peanut brittle, willing it to offer itself to be my choice, savoring in my mind the sweet-salty blend.
    As I ponder the difficult decision, the girls who were talking with Mary come up to the candy counter. I don’t actually know them personally, but I’ve seen them around. They’re obviously continuing a conversation started a fewminutes before. They don’t recognize me. They don’t even notice me.
    One of them says, “He’s so standoffish and above it all. I don’t know why she doesn’t drop him.”
    “Well, that wouldn’t be very patriotic, would it?”
    “No, but you know what I mean; he’s let the war go to his head.”
    “Oh, for sure! And he wasn’t even an officer or anything.”
    “You know Mary. Too nice for her own good.”
    I can guess who they’re talking about.
Standoffish!
My brother is the farthest thing from it. At least he wasn’t like that before he went away, I’m sure of that. Now that he’s back, he’s a tiny bit different, a little quieter. But, so what?
    The girls buy a bag of chocolate kisses, each of them dipping into it, and leave without even glancing at me.
    “Peanut brittle,” I say confidently. The minute I pay, and the girl hands over the small bag, I wish I’d chosen a square of chocolate fudge.

CHAPTER

8
    “They should give us a week off school every month,” I say as I sprinkle more brown sugar on my cornflakes. It’s the last week of April, and school’s closed for the Easter break. “I love sleeping in.”
    “Eight-thirty isn’t much of a sleep-in,” Jamie says.
    “It is if you normally have to roll out of bed at the ungodly hour of seven and force your eyelids to stay open for another scintillating day at school.”
    We’re in the kitchen having breakfast. Mother has brought the ironing board down from the sewing room and propped it over the backs of two kitchen chairs. She flattens tea towels and handkerchiefs while she keeps up with the conversation. Through the window, we can see Mrs. Hall, next door, hanging out her laundry. Mother waves.
    “I need to go away somewhere,” Jamie growls into the newspaper he’s browsing through.
    “But you just got home,” Mother says. “We’ve hardly had a chance to talk.”
    “Talk! About what?”
    “About you, of course, about your war experiences.”
    “I didn’t have experiences. The war was about fighting. I wasn’t on a sightseeing tour. We were bombed. We were shot at. And we did the same back. Men died. And that was the war.” He glares at the classified section.
    Letters not sent
.
    It’s quiet tonight. It won’t last, not after yesterday’s grim exercise. There were ten of us. We had to move quietly, in twos, crouching close to tumbled walls of bombed buildings, slipping into empty doorways. I was with Defazio, who grew up in downtown Toronto. He