What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (16 page)

“Hey, don’t tell my mother I just said that about Caroline and the books,” she says. “I don’t think she remembers that today is the anniversary, and I don’t want to make her sad by reminding her. Okay, so, you’ve got to see this new music video. I wanted it to download all the way before you saw it. Wait, so you never told me what music you like. Did you say you like Miley Cyrus?”

Then she’s curling her legs under her and calling out more names of singers.

“Okay, let’s do it this way,” she says, slowing down like her speed’s what’s the problem. “What’s on your iPod? Er, I mean, um, your CD player? Where do you get your music? Wait, I’ve
got
to show you this YouTube video—have you seen that surprised kitten one? Where the guy holds up his hands like it’s a stickup and the kitten does the same thing? The kitten, like,
copies
him.”

I thank the Lord Jesus she’s busy fiddling around with the letter keys, pictures popping up as fast as she names them, so she cain’t see that I have no earthly idea what she’s talking about. On the far side of Cricket’s bed, which is high as Princess and the Pea, is a second nightstand chock-full of more nail polish in shades of pink and purple, a clock that’s the shape of Snoopy from the funny papers, and a beat-up book. I cain’t hardly take it all in.

And then I see it, which is funny because I think my eyes are closed when it lights up. It happens real fast, same as the other times. Like a flash. Or when lightning hits and you can see ever-thing for a split second before it goes dark. In my head I see a book with real thin pages and a lady-hand holding a match to the edge of them. Before it goes dark the flash picture shows the lady-hand tossing the book into the fireplace where it lands on top of already burning logs, the cover about to go up in flames. I
squeeze my eyes closed tight to make sure and yup, yessir, there it is, plain as day written on the cover:
The Bible
.

“Earth to Carrie,” Cricket’s saying. “What happened? You feeling sick again?”

“What? Oh, sorry,” I say. “What’d you say?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m not gonna tell her what I just saw or what I’ve seen before. Heck,
I
don’t even know what I just saw. Why would a lady burn the Bible? Lord, please don’t let me turn crazy having these visions all the time. Please?

“Okay, it finally loaded,” Cricket says, pulling me close to her side. “Scootch in so you can see better. Check it out.”

I cain’t believe she’s being so nice to me. She smells like bubble gum and lemonade. When she’s thinking on something she twitches her nose to the right and left, you have to watch real close for it. But what if she’s just being nice because that’s what her momma taught her to be? And because I look like her dead sister. Maybe she’ll want to be around me for that but then when she sees I’m not as great as her sister was she’ll get tired of me. She’s just being polite is all. Oh Lord, please don’t let good manners be the reason she’s being nice to me.

But maybe it’s not that at all. She does really and truly seem like she’s glad I came over. Maybe she really does like me—after all, she don’t know anything about me. She’ll just know what I tell her. So from here on out I was the most popular kid in school back home. Who’s to say different? She’d never find out the truth. Just look at her. She flicks her hair back like she’s a model, not even knowing she does it. I wish my hair fell over back behind my shoulders like hers does. Mine’s shorter but I’m gonna grow it long like Cricket’s. I was going to anyway. I’ll get the rat’s nests out and I’ll brush it lots before bed so it’ll get silky like hers. People might come to think of us as sisters.
Cricket Ford went and found herself another sister
, they’ll say. I can show her some of the fun
stuff me and Emma used to do. Emma. I haven’t thought of her this whole entire day practically! Usually by now I’d have turned her name over in my head at least a hundred times. Emma, if the ghost of you is floatin’ around, reading my thoughts, don’t be mad, okay? I promise I won’t ever stop thinking about you. I’ll show Cricket how to do that log-fence-balance thing we used to love. I’ll teach her how to play marbles and jacks. Someday I might could take her to see our creek back home. I’ll show her your favorite rock, but don’t worry I won’t let her set on it because it’s yours. So if you’re reading my mind right now or if some other ghost is telling you about what I’m thinking, remember that I love you best of all. Cricket comes in second, I swear. You’d love her just like I do. She’s busy looking at pictures on her laptop right now.

“What’s that?” I say.

She looks up and around the room to see what I’m talking about. “What’s what?”

“That,” I say, pointing to where her hands are resting.

“This? It’s a MacBook,” she says. “You’re on a PC? You’ve
so
got to go Mac—it’s way better.”

“What’s Mac?”

She looks up at me and cocks her head like Brownie the dog used to do when he thought he heard something off in the distance. “Huh?”

“What’s a Mac? I don’t know what that is,” I say, pointing again to the thing with pictures she’s been pecking at with her fingers. I hate it that my face gets red hot when I’m embarrassed. It’s like I have a secret and it’s being flashed on a neon sign above my head.

“Wait, you don’t know what
this
is?
This
. This whole thing.” She waves her hand in a circle over it.
“You don’t know what a
computer
is?”

My cheeks are on fire.

“I, um, I know what a computer is, Jeez Louise,” I say, the red
not getting any better—like it knows I’m lying and won’t go away until I tell the truth. “I …”

“You don’t know what a computer is,” she says. She’s not saying it mean. It’s more that she’s thinking out loud. As if she was at the zoo and the teacher told her monkeys like bananas and she’s repeating it so she can understand it better.
Monkeys like bananas
, she’d repeat it to herself, to make sure she got it right.

“So y’all didn’t have computers up in the mountains?”

I shake my head. No sense lying now that I know she sees the truth.

“Maybe other people did,” I tell her, “but not us. And not Orla Mae—she’s my best friend. And not Mr. Wilson who lived next to us.”

I’m ready for the names to start flying. Dumbbell. Stoop (for stupid). Instead, she just shrugs her shoulders, turns back to the computer, and says, “Wow. Okay, well, this is a computer and the first thing you should know is that computers have answers to everything you could ever possibly want to know. You can do
anything
on a computer. You can listen to music. Watch videos. You can chat with your friends—if they have computers, I mean. Anything. Think up a question and I’ll Google it and get you the answer. First I want to show you something: what was your old address?”

“Why do you want my old address?”

“Just,” she says. “It’s too hard to explain—I’ll just show you. You’ll see. It’s so cool. What was it?”

Her fingers are hovering over the letter buttons, waiting for me to tell them what to press. “Twenty-two Turn River Road,” I tell her. “Hendersonville, North Carolina. I don’t remember the zip code, though.”

She pecks the words in and says, “That’s okay. I don’t need it. Now watch this.”

There on the screen is a picture of Planet Earth. Cricket taps
something and it starts moving—like we’re watching a movie or television right here at her desk! It shows the planet getting closer—like we’re birds flying to Earth from outer space … getting closer …

“Whoa,” I say, almost feeling carsick watching it fly.

And closer …

“What in the Sam Hill?” I cain’t help cussing. I never seen anything like this
ever
. It’s like a little movie.

“I told you!” Cricket says, and I can feel her watching my face. “Wait. It gets better.”

Closer still …

And then you can see we’re heading to America. We keep flying and I wince feeling like we might crash-land. Then I can make out trees—real live trees not cartoon pictures of them—and mountains …

“That looks just like …”

Now roads and buildings. I cain’t be certain but it looks like …

“Here we are!” Cricket says as the bird slows down to land lightly. “Home sweet home! Twenty-two Turn River Road. Hendersonville, North Carolina!”

If my eyes were any wider they’d peel back from my own head.

“Told you it was cool,” she says, smiling big. I know how she feels. I feel—I mean I felt—that good whenever Emma got tickled by something I showed her.

“Google Earth,” she says. Like that’s supposed to explain it. “I just downloaded it. It’s been around awhile, I just hadn’t gotten around to signing up and then we moved in with Grandma and everything. See? You can put in any address—anywhere in the world—and it’ll fly you there and put a little red pin. Sometimes it’s a bit off of the exact address. Like now. Here, let’s sweep along till you see your house. Just tell me when you see it and I’ll slow it down. See it yet?”

“No,” I say. “Wait, go back a second. Oh, no. I thought that was it. Wait! There! That looks like Mr. Wilson’s house! It is! No way—that’s Mr. Wilson’s house right there! His fence lost the two middle beams a ways back and he’s always saying he’ll fix it when the beams come out of hiding so I know for a fact that’s his house. So if that’s Mr. Wilson’s ours should be right … there … on the other side of that thicket. Why ain’t—isn’t—why
isn’t
it there?”

That’s when I remember the rumors going around town before we left. They said they were gonna tear the house down. Momma said at the time it’d suit her just fine—
no good memories in this godforsaken
house—but I guess I didn’t think they’d really go through with it. Now what do I do? I cain’t tell her
oh, I just remembered they said they were going to wreck the house
because then she’d ask how come and then what would I say?
Because my stepdaddy was murdered there and oh by the way I’m the one who murdered him?
Oh Lord, I promise, cross my heart promise, that if you help me figure out what to tell Cricket I will never ever ask you for anything ever again.

“You didn’t really come from there, did you?” Cricket asks, her voice quiet and grown-up and serious. “It’s okay. You can tell me what’s up, you know. I’m really good at keeping secrets. Are you in some kind of trouble, you and your mom?”

Mr. White from the drugstore back in my first hometown, Toast, used to say
the truth may hurt but it hurts a whole lot less than a lie
.

“I ain’t—I mean, I’m
not
, we’re not in trouble, Momma and me,” I start out. “And yeah we’re from Hendersonville, but I think, well, I’m not sure but they might have tore our house down after we left. That’s why it ain’t—that’s why it’s
not
there.”

“Oh-Em-Gee, this is exactly the kind of thing computers are perfect for,” she says, sounding almost happy to have a mystery to solve. “We can check the town records and see if the house was condemned or knocked down or whatever. Let’s see. Hendersonville
Town Hall. Okay here’s the home page. Now let’s go to the tabs up top. ‘Records.’ Let’s start there.”

“You can do that?”

“Let’s see, there’s birth records, death certificates, zoning.” She’s talking to herself as much as she’s talking to me. I realize too that she can read a whole lot faster than me. She can do ever-thing a whole lot faster than me. Words pop up on the screen then vanish. Pictures too. All before I can make anything out, it goes so quick.

“This is so cool,” I say.

It’s true. I never had any kind of fun like the kind I’m having now.

“You should come over like
all
the time,” Cricket says. “Wait, what school are you gonna go to, you think? You shouldn’t come to my school—I hate my school. They’re all like
mean
. In bad moods all the time. You’re in, what, fourth grade? Fifth? I hated fifth grade at my school. This one girl? Gummy Brainard? She would always cross something when you said
no crossies counts
but you wouldn’t know it and then she’d steal whatever secret you told her and blab it all over kingdom come. That just tells you what kind of a person she is. I’m just saying. Oh-oh, before I forget, lemme show you that cat video on YouTube I was telling you about just now.”

She’s tapping away again. It’s a
real marvel
, like my teacher used to say when Maisey Wells bent her thumb all the way back to show she was double-jointed.

“Can you find out answers to anything on that thing?” I ask her.

“Anything in the world,” she says.

Even though I cain’t think what a computer would have about her, I hear myself ask, “Can you look up my momma?”

Cricket looks over at me and says, “I can find out anything about
any
body you want.”

Mrs. Ford’s voice reaches us from somewhere down below:

“Girls! Y’all come down here a second, will you?”

“When I come back up I’ll Google her, m’kay?”

“Girls?” Mrs. Ford hollers again.

“Let me go see what she wants,” Cricket sighs. “I’ll be right back.”

When Cricket leaves the room she takes all the air with her. I look around and for a split second I think I’d like to press a letter button or two on her computer but I don’t dare because that’d be a
recipe for disaster
. Before we left home, before we sold near ever-thing we owned, before her stitches were snipped out even, Momma said if I told people both her husbands had died it’d be a
recipe for disaster
, but if you ask me, Richard
not
being dead would be the real disaster.

There are some things that are blurry in my brain and some that are crystal clear. Even though I try my hardest for them to get fuzzy, the minutes before Richard died are shiny and sharp when they cut into my thoughts.

It was a Tuesday. I had eaten supper over at Orla Mae’s house that night and skipped home with extra biscuits I snuck into my pockets for Emma because Momma was having one of her not-coming-out-of-the-bedroom spells again and Richard was disappearing for days at a time so food was scarce. When I opened the door to the house the first thing I noticed was the mess—a chair knocked onto its side, broken glass crunching underfoot, the lamp laying on the ground without its shade, throwing weird light that made me think I’d walked into the wrong place. I can still hear my own voice calling out for Momma and Emma, but it was real quiet and my stomach twisted up with worry. When I crossed the living room I heard a groan and there, crumpled up against the wall with the peeling flowered wallpaper the people before us had left behind and Richard never got around to sanding off like he said he was gonna on the day we moved in, there
was my momma, blood spreading out from her head like a spilled coffee cup. One of her arms bent like it’d been pulled out of the socket. Her housedress pulled up almost to her underpants.