Sweet Little Lies (7 page)

“Our blood mingles, and we become one. You
are now as much Carol Ann as I am, and I am as much Lily as you
are. We are one, sisters in blood.”

Redness slipped down my elbow. Spots danced
merrily in my vision.

Carol Ann’s eyes sparkled. “Quick, we need to
tie this together, let our blood flow through each other’s veins as
our hearts beat together.”

She grabbed a sock off the floor and wound it
around our arms, dabbing at the rivulets before they splashed on
the floor of my bedroom, then beckoned me to lay down next to her.
I put my head in her lap, my arm stretched and tied to hers, and
she held me as our blood became one. I felt at peace. The ferocity
of the storm seemed to lessen, and I felt calm, sleepy even.

“LILY!” The scream made me jump. It was Mama.
She saw what Carol Ann and I had done. I didn’t care. I was tired.
It was too much trouble to worry about the beating I was going to
get.

I didn’t get to see Carol Ann the rest of
that muggy summer. Mama sent me away to a white place that smelled
of antiseptic and urine. I hated it.

***

I came back from the white place in the fall,
quieter, more watchful than before. The leaves were red and orange
and brown, the skies were crisp and blue. I was worried that Carol
Ann may have moved away; the drive was empty across the street, the
window dark. When I asked Mama, she told me to quit it already. No
more talk of Carol Ann. I wasn’t allowed to see her, to play with
her, anymore.

I went back to school that year. Mama had
been keeping me home before, teaching me herself, but she figured
it was time for me to leave the nest. I needed to be around more
girls and boys my age. I was so happy that she sent me to school at
last, because Carol Ann was there. She had moved, but only a couple
of streets over. She was zoned to the Junior High, just like I
was.

We didn’t exactly pick up where we left off.
Carol Ann had many other friends now. But I’d catch her watching me
as I stood on the periphery of her group of devotees, and she’d
wink at me in welcome. Those moments warmed my heart and soul. She
was still my Carol Ann, even though I shared her with my
classmates.

The school year progressed without incident
until Carol Ann came up with a new game. The pass-out game. Every
girl in school wanted to be a part of it. We’d line up in the
bathrooms, stand with out backs against the wall, hold our breath
until the world got spinny. Carol Ann would cover our hearts with
her hands and push. Hard. We’d pass out cold, some sliding down the
walls, some keeling over. Carol Ann reasoned that it stopped our
hearts for a moment, and in that brief time we could see God.
That’s why the teachers got so upset when they found out.

Of course, they found out when I was doing
the heart pushing on a seventh-grader named Jo. I got suspended,
and the fun stopped. No more pass-out game. No more Carol Ann, at
least until I wasn’t grounded any more.

They rezoned us for ninth grade, decided we
were big enough to go to high school. I had to take the bus, which
I normally hated, because it drove past the Johnsons’ farm, and
their copse of pine trees with the hanging man in them. I knew it
wasn’t a real dead man, but the branches in one of the trees had
died, and they drooped brown against the evergreen—arms, legs,
torso and broken neck. Mama used to drive me to Doctor Halloway
this route, ignoring my requests to go the long way past Tappy’s
place. I hated this road as a young girl, just knew the Hanging Man
would get out of that tree and follow me home.

When the bus would pass it by, I’d try not to
look. Since I was a little older now, it wasn’t so bad in the
daylight. But as winter came along and the days shortened, the
hanging man waited for me in the dusky gloom. He spoke to me, the
deadness of the pine needles brown and dusty like a grave.

The next year, Carol Ann started taking the
bus. Life got better. She was only on it some days, because she had
a lot of dates now. Some days, after school, I’d watch Carol Ann
riding off in cars with shiny, clean boys, throwing a grin over her
shoulder as they faded into the gloaming. But there were times that
she’d come out of the school, clothes rumpled, mouth red and raw,
scabs forming on her knees. She’d jump on the bus just before it
pulled away from the curb and wouldn’t want to talk.

But mostly, we sat together in the back,
those idyllic days, talking about boys and teachers, the upcoming
dances and who was doing it. I knew Carol Ann was. You could tell
that about her. I was fascinated by sex, though I’d never
experienced it. Carol Ann promised to tell me all about it.

She snuck vodka from her parents’ house and
slipped it into her milk some mornings. She’s share the treat with
me, and we’d get boneless in the back of the bus, giggling our fool
heads off. She taught me how to make a homemade scar tattoo, using
the initials of a boy I liked. She took the eraser end of a pencil
and ran it up and down her arm a million times until a shiny raw
burn in the shape of a J appeared. She handed the pencil to me, and
I tore at my skin until a misaligned M welled blood. I have that M
to this day. I don’t remember which boy it was for.

The bus driver, Mrs. Bean, caught us with the
vodka-laced milk. Carol Ann wasn’t allowed to ride the bus anymore.
I didn’t see her as much after that. I think the school and Mama
really did their best to keep us apart. It was probably a wise
decision. But I felt incomplete without her at my side.

***

Now that I’m grown, away from Mama’s house,
away from Carol Ann, I remember the little things. Spilling on
Carol Ann’s bike, scraping the length of my thigh on the gravel.
The year she pushed me into the cactus while we were
trick-or-treating. The day I nearly drowned when I fell through the
ice on Gideon’s Lake, and she laughed watching me panic before she
went for help. Carol Ann did nothing but get me in trouble, and I
was happy to leave her behind as an adult.

So you can imagine my shock and surprise when
the doorbell rang, late one evening, and Carol Ann was on my front
step. Somewhere, deep inside me, I knew something was dreadfully
wrong.

I live in the A-frame house I grew up in.
Mama’s been in a home over in Spring Hill for a couple of years
now. They have nice flowerbeds, and I visit her often. We walk
amongst the flowers and she reminds me of all the terrible things I
did when I was a kid. No one thought I’d ever grow out of my
awkward stage, but I did. I went off to college and everything.
Carol Ann went to a neighboring school. I’d see her every once in a
while, working as a waitress in one of the coffee shops on campus,
or shopping in the bookstore. I learned that it was best to ignore
her. If I ignored her enough, she’d get the hint and leave.

But here she was, in the flesh, rain
streaming down her face. Her blond hair was shorter, wet through,
darker than I remembered. She was a skinny thing, not the radiant
beauty I remember from my childhood.

I was frozen at the door, unsure of what to
do. She knew better than to come calling, that was strictly
forbidden. We’d laid those ground rules years before, and she’d
always listened. I was saved by the phone ringing. I glared at her
and motioned for her to stay right where she was. Carol Ann was not
invited into my house. Not after what she did all those years ago.
It had taken me forever to get over that.

The phone kept trilling, so I turned and went
to the marble side table in the foyer, the one that held the old
fashioned rotary-dial. I picked it up, almost carelessly. It was
Mama’s nurse at the Home. I listened. Felt the floor rushing up to
meet me. Everything went dark after that.

***

When I woke, the sun was streaming in the
kitchen window. Somehow I’d gotten myself to a chair. There was
coffee brewing, the rich scent wafting to my nose. Carol Ann stood
at the counter, a yellow cup in her hands. She took a deep drink,
then smiled at me.

“Hey, stranger.” Her voice was soft, that
semi-foreign lilt more pronounced, like she’d been living overseas
lately.

“Hey, yourself,” I replied. “You’re not
supposed to be here.”

“You needed me.” She’d shrugged, a lock of
lank blond falling across her forehead. “I’m sorry about your Mama.
She was a good woman.”

I had a vision of Mama then, standing in the
same spot, her hair in curlers, rushing to finish the preparations
for a garden club meeting, stopping to lean back and take a sip of
hot, sweet tea and smiling to herself because it was perfect. She
was perfect. Mama was always perfection personified. Not flawed and
messy like me. My heart hurt.

I forced myself to do the right thing. To do
what needed to be done. My heart broke a little, and my head swam
when I said, “Carol Ann, you need to leave. I don’t need you. I
never did.”

She looked down at the floor, then met my
eyes. Tear glistened in the corners, making the cornflower blue
look like a wax crayon. “C’mon, Lily. We’re blood sisters, you and
I. We’re a physical part of each other. How can you say you don’t
need a part of yourself? The best part of yourself? I make you
strong.”

“ No!” I screamed at her, all patience gone.
“You are not a part of me. You aren’t…”

A fury I hadn’t felt in years bubbled through
my chest. There was only one way to get through to her. I grabbed
the porcelain mug from her hand, smashed it on the counter, and
swiped it a gleaming shard across her perfect white throat. She
fell in a heap, blood everywhere.

As I stood over her, watching her hair turn
strawberry, I felt a tug and looked down at my leg. Carol Ann was
trying to grab a hold of my foot. I kicked her instead, hard, in
the ribs. She stopped moving then.

***

The thought is fleeting. What have I
done?

I’ve just killed Carol Ann. She was never
sweet, never innocent. She was a leech, an albatross around my
neck. I didn’t need her. Carol Ann needed me. That’s what Doctor
Halloway always told me. That’s what they said in the hospital,
too. The white place, so pristine, so calm. They told me I’d know
when the time was right to get rid of Carol Ann once and for all.
Mama would be so proud. She knew I didn’t need Carol Ann, knew I
was strong enough to live on my own. She always believed in me. I
miss her.

The blood drips… drips… drips… from my arm. I
feel lighter already.

Novel Excerpts

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All
rights reserved.

“No. Please don’t.” She whispered the words,
a divine prayer. “No. Please don’t.” There they were again, bubbles
forming at her lips, the words slipping out as if greased from her
tongue.

Even in death, Jessica Ann Porter was
unfailingly polite. She wasn’t struggling, wasn’t crying, just
pleading with those luminescent chocolate eyes, as eager to please
as a puppy. He tried to shake off the thought. He’d had a puppy
once. It had licked his hand and gleefully scampered about his
feet, begging to be played with. It wasn’t his fault that the
thing’s bones were so fragile, that the roughhousing meant for a
boy and his dog forced a sliver of rib into the little creature’s
heart. The light shone, then faded in the puppy’s eyes as it died
in the grass in his backyard. That same light in Jessica’s eyes,
her life leaching slowly from their cinnamon depths, died at this
very moment.

He noted the signs of death dispassionately.
Blue lips, cyanotic. The hemorrhaging in the sclera of the eyes,
pinpoint pricks of crimson. The body seemed to cool immediately,
though he knew it would take some time for the heat to fully
dissipate. The vivacious yet shy eighteen-year-old was now nothing
more than a piece of meat, soon to be consigned back to the earth.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Blowfly to maggot. The life cycle
complete once again.

He shook off the reverie. It was time to get
to work. Glancing around, he spied his tool kit. He didn’t remember
kicking it over, perhaps his memory was failing him. Had the girl
actually struggled? He didn’t think so, but confusion sets in at
the most important moments. He would have to consider that later,
when he could give it his undivided thought. Only the radiant glow
of her eyes at the moment of expiration remained for him now. He
palmed the handsaw and lifted her limp hand.

No, please don’t. Three little words,
innocuous in their definitions. No great allegories, no ethical
dilemmas. No, please don’t. The words echoed through his brain as
he sawed, their rhythm spurring his own. No, please don’t. No,
please don’t. Back and forth, back and forth.

No, please don’t. Hear these words, and dream
of hell.

***

Nashville was holding its collective breath
on this warm summer night. After four stays of execution, the death
watch had started again. Homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson watched
as the order was announced that the governor would not be issuing
another stay, then snapped off the television and walked to the
window of her tiny office in the Criminal Justice Center. The
Nashville skyline spread before her in all its glory, continuously
lit by blazing flashes of color. The high-end pyrotechnic delights
were one of the largest displays in the nation. It was the Fourth
of July. The quintessential American holiday. Hordes of people
gathered in Riverfront Park to hear the Nashville Symphony
Orchestra perform in concert with the brilliant flares of light.
Things were drawing to a close now. Taylor could hear the strains
of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, a Russian theme to celebrate
America’s independence. She jumped slightly with every cannon
blast, perfectly coinciding with launched rockets.