The Good Sister (25 page)

Angel leans forward and takes hold of the edge of the freezer lid, tugging it upward . . .

All at once, a deafening, high-pitched sound blasts from the first floor.

What the—?

It’s the smoke alarm.

The eggs—the eggs are on the stove burner, undoubtedly scorched by now.

Sandra Lutz’s voice rises above the screeching alarm, filling Angel’s head

. . .
airtight and watertight, perfect for keeping out insects and dampness . . .

Angel glances toward the stairway. Someone is going to hear that piercing sound, even with all the windows closed.

Hurry! Get upstairs and turn it off!

I will, but first—

This can wait a few more minutes! It’s been buried down here for almost thirty years.

Buried down here in the murky basement. . . . buried in the darkest corner of Angel’s brain. Buried long enough.

Angel gives the lid a mighty, final tug, and this time, it opens.

Putrid air spills forth.

The light from the overhead bulb fails to permeate the freezer’s depths, making it impossible for Angel to see her. But she’s there.

Been there all these years, all along.

“Oh, Ruthie . . . Ruthie . . .”

L
eash in hand, Al Witkowski frowns, looking down at his puppy.

One moment they were walking briskly along Redbud Street, and the next, Roscoe stopped in his tracks and started whimpering.

“What’s the matter, boy? Did you step on something? Here, let me take a look.”

Al crouches beside the dog and begins lifting his paws, looking for embedded broken glass or sharp bits of metal, finding nothing.

But something is clearly bothering Roscoe. He only whines like this when he’s in pain.

Stumped, Al tugs on the leash. “Come on, boy. Even I’m not hurting yet, and I’m in worse shape than you are. It’s only been two blocks and we’re almost home.”

Roscoe digs in his paws, head tilted, looking toward the dry cleaner a few doors down.

“We’re almost there, Roscoe. Let’s get home. I have a job to get to.”

Still the dog refuses to budge. Frustrated, Al bends over and picks him up. “Fine. If you can’t walk, I’ll carry you.”

He strides on down the block with the dog squirming in his arms. He might have to take his morning walks without the puppy from now on, if this is how it’s going to—

Al stops short a few steps away from the building.

There’s a faint, high-pitched tone coming from somewhere.

“Is that what it is, boy? Is that sound hurting you?”

It must be. Dogs’ ears are much more sensitive than humans’. Poor guy.

What the hell
is
that sound? A shrill electronic hum, it seems to be coming from out back somewhere.

He quickly puts the dog back inside, then heads out to investigate, walking up the rutted drive alongside the building. The rutted parking lot looks the same as always: empty, except for a couple of Dumpsters.

The high-pitched buzz seems to be coming from the field behind the parking lot . . . or maybe, Al realizes, from the block beyond. He begins picking his way through the weeds, then remembers the figure he thought he glimpsed in this very spot a few nights ago.

A ghost? he wondered at the time. Sandra’s ghost?

In broad daylight, the idea is almost laughable. Almost.

The sound does seem to be coming from the gloomy, abandoned Victorian he can see through the trees. And now that he’s closer to it, he recognizes it as the distinctive peal of a smoke alarm.

His thoughts immediately go to Sandra, who might have lived if only the smoke detectors in her house had been in working order.

If only . . .

Al pushes thoughts of Sandra aside.

Is the old place on fire?

It seems pretty damned unlikely that an empty house would spontaneously combust, which means that either the resident ghosts set a fire or someone is—

The sound is abruptly curtailed, as if the button was pushed to turn off the alarm.

Knitting his bushy gray-blond eyebrows, Al moves closer to the house, sidestepping a rusted tire rim and gingerly skirting a clump of pricker bushes. An overgrown evergreen border separates the lot from the backyard of the Addams House, thinner in some spots than in others.

Al works his way toward what looks almost like an opening and realizes that he’s reached a path of sorts, following a trail where the weeds have been bent and broken, as though someone has walked here. Sure enough, in a muddy patch close to the opening in the border, he spots a couple of indentations that look like footprints.

Maybe he really did see a person heading back here the other night.

Maybe whoever it was just wanted to cut through to the next block—although there’s a far easier path from Redbud to Lilac behind a long-shuttered warehouse a couple of doors down. All the neighborhood kids use it.

So why would anyone come this way?

Reaching the evergreens, Al parts a couple of boughs to get a better look at the big old house. It looks foreboding as always, rising against a backdrop of bare branches and a gloomy morning sky. But as he peers at it, he spots something.

A faint light glows in the basement windows.

For a long time, Al stands there, looking at it.

He’s seen light in the front windows, where the lamps on timers are located, but . . .

Who puts a timer lamp in a basement?

Is someone renting the place now? Probably.

Wait . . .

Would a legitimate renter sneak through an empty lot at night?

No.

It must be kids, Al decides. After all, the house, when it was abandoned back in the seventies, was a magnet for him and his cronies. It stands to reason that a new generation of neighborhood children has discovered the Addams House.

He turns away, satisfied with the explanation.

But as he makes his way back home, he thinks about the smoke alarm going off. And about Sandra.

He remembers how her eyes had lit up when she showed him around the old house on that long-ago day. “I’ve always wondered what this place was like inside. Isn’t this woodwork magnificent, Al?”

She used fancy words like that.
Magnificent
.

Oh, Sandra.
You
were magnificent.

It’s wrong for a bunch of careless kids to be trespassing, running loose through the old house, probably vandalizing it, smoking cigarettes . . .

What if they burn the place down?

No. No way. I won’t let that happen.

Maybe Sandra didn’t live there, but it was the last place Al saw her alive. He still thinks of her whenever he sees the house, thinks of what might have been . . .

Al makes up his mind to go over there and take a look around. Not now, because he has a moving job to oversee. And not later, because he’s meeting his brother Bobby and Glenn Cicero at Louie’s, a neighborhood bar, to watch the Sabres game over beer and wings.

But I will
, he vows,
just as soon as I have a chance.

Entry from the marble notebook

Thursday, February 13, 1986

Wouldn’t you know it? All week, I’ve been looking forward to practicing my parallel parking over in front of Cardinal Ruffini after school tomorrow, but Father mentioned he has to stay late for a meeting at the bank so we won’t be able to go driving.

“You look disappointed,” he said, like he thought it was because I wouldn’t get to spend two hours in the car alone with him.

All I could think was that now I won’t get to see my cute guy for another whole week.

On days Mother works, I walk home the long way so that I can detour past Cardinal Ruffini in case he’s hanging around outside, but he never is.

I’ve been trying to find out his name so that I can figure out where he lives because maybe I can walk past his house. I check all the sports articles in the newspaper, and they print the roster so I know all the possible names he could have.

I wish I knew which one is his. It would make me feel like I know him a little better. Still, I honestly think I’m falling in love with him. How am I going to wait a whole week to see him again?

Chapter 13

S
tepping out of the shower, Carley grabs a towel and swipes a jagged window into the steamed-over mirror. Her own bloodshot eyes, still swollen from tears and rimmed by dark circles, stare morosely back at her.

Thanks to her mother changing the wifi password, she just spent a largely sleepless night mourning her dead friend instead of chatting online with Angel, her new friend. Her
only
friend.

Until now, she hasn’t truly allowed herself to wallow in what happened to Nicki—no, in what Nicki
did
. For a week now, she’s been doing her best to distract herself with schoolwork, with a book, or—mostly—with the Internet.

Not last night. Last night—this morning, really—she finally let the brutal truth hit her full force, maybe to punish herself for her own stupid lapse in judgment. Yes, she deserves pain, deserves to suffer.

With the inevitable tears came anger—fresh anger, not over the way Nicki destroyed their friendship, but that Nicki took her own life.

How could you do that to yourself? To your parents? To me?

It just doesn’t make sense.

Nicki just wasn’t capable of hurting herself, let alone destroying her parents’ lives and damaging everyone who ever knew and loved her.

Obviously, she changed
, Carley reminded herself.
She was a different person when she did what she did.

But somehow, in all those hours tossing her head on a sodden pillow as black shadows faded to blue, and finally to filmy gray, Carley couldn’t seem to accept that fact as the simple answer. People don’t change that drastically.

Hearing a knock on the bathroom door, she turns abruptly away from the mirror.

It’s probably Aunt Frankie. It can’t be Emma, because she would never get up this early on a Saturday—and even if she did, she would bang on the door and holler, not rap gently.

“I’m in here,” Carley calls.

“I know.”

Surprised to hear her sister’s voice, and not Aunt Frankie’s, she frowns. “Go use the one in Mom and Dad’s room.”

“For one thing, Dad is in the shower and for another thing, I don’t have to go to the bathroom. I just need to come in.”

“But I’m in here!”

“I know! Duh! I have to tell you something.”

Exasperated, Carley wraps herself in the towel and opens the door a crack.

“What?”

“Let me in.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to shout it so the whole world can hear, okay?”

As irked as she is intrigued, Carley steps backward into the steamy bathroom. Her sister pushes in after her, clad in the snug-fitting yoga pants and a T-shirt she wears as pajamas.

Carley envies her trim figure, as always.

It wouldn’t be so frustrating if Emma at least worked at being in shape, but she’s one of those people who can eat whatever she wants, lie around all day, and wear a size two.

“Don’t worry, it’ll catch up with her sooner or later,” Nicki used to say. She, too, was in good shape, but unlike Emma, she sweated and starved to squeeze into teeny sizes.

And for what?

Now her slim, toned body is lying in a coffin, buried in the ground.

“Something crazy just happened,” Emma announces, closing the bathroom door.

“Crazy good?”

“Crazy bad. Really bad. Do you know some girl named Taylor Morino?”

Carley nods.

Taylor Morino is yet another annoyingly perfect-looking girl, one who has a ton of friends, gets good grades, and dates the best-looking athletes at Cardinal Ruffini. The seniors voted her Spring Fling queen—and not, by any means, as a joke.

“I know who she is. She goes to Sisters. Why?”

“She killed herself last night.”

“
What?
”

“Yes.” A quirky hint of an odd smirk plays at the edges of Emma’s mouth, as if she’s secretly delighted at this terrible news, or maybe just delighted by her own importance in delivering it.

“But . . . why?”

Why would a girl like Taylor Morino kill herself?

Why would Nicki?

Why would anyone?

“I have no idea, but I swear, it’s like an epidemic or something,” Emma says. “You know?”

Carley thinks of that novel, the one Angel told her to read:
The Virgin Suicides.
Last night, when she and Aunt Frankie were talking about books, she asked Aunt Frankie if she’d ever read that one.

“Yep. It’s about an old-fashioned Catholic family with five sisters,” Aunt Frankie said wryly. “How’s that for coincidence?”

“Is that why you read it?”

“
Everyone
read it. It was one of those books, fifteen years ago, maybe twenty.”

“Did my mom read it?”

“Probably. Ask her.”

But Carley didn’t want to do that. Not with a title like
The Virgin Suicides.
It would open the door to yet another conversation she doesn’t feel like having.

“So what happens in the book?” she asked Aunt Frankie, feigning complete cluelessness even though Angel had given her a hint of the plot. “Does one of the sisters kill herself or something?”

“They all kill themselves.”

Carley’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“It wasn’t really clear. It was . . . look, it’s a dark book, Carley. Why are you asking about it?”

She shrugged. “No reason.”

“Were you thinking of reading it? Because I don’t know if that’s such a good idea for you, especially now.”

But Angel thought it was. Carley fully intended to ask her more about it, but of course she couldn’t even get online when she got home last night.

Remembering the scene she’d caused in the kitchen, she feels a familiar pang of guilt.

But she couldn’t seem to help flying into a rage. Angel is her only friend in the world lately, and the Internet is Carley’s only means of reaching her.

And now . . . especially now, right now . . . I really need to connect with her.

“Epidemic” might be an overly dramatic word, but still . . . another suicide, so close to home, and just a week after Nicki’s?

“How did you find out about it?” she asks her sister.

“I was downstairs in the family room a few minutes ago, and, like, no one knew I was there . . .”

Carley raises an eyebrow at her.

“Okay. I actually snuck in there,” Emma amends, “because I figured Mom must have written down the new wifi password someplace. I really need to get online.”

Ordinarily, Carley would, in proper big sister mode, chide Emma for snooping. But today, she only nods. Yes. She gets it. She really needs to get online, too.

“So anyway, some lady is here with Mom in the kitchen—”

“The piano teacher.” Carley nods. That’s why Dad woke her up, not long after she finally managed to drift off to sleep.

At first she thought she was dreaming when he said there’s a piano teacher here to see her, because she hasn’t taken piano lessons in ages. But then Dad explained that Mom had forgotten to tell her about it, and that she thought it would be good for Carley.

Which made no sense at all, and she told her father that.

“I don’t know, Mom thinks it will help you . . . you know, feel better about . . . everything.”

That was funny, because Nicki took piano lessons and it obviously didn’t help her feel better about anything.

But Dad wasn’t in his usual patient mood—he’d mentioned that he had to get ready for work and he wasn’t feeling very good today—and he added, in his I-mean-business tone, “Listen, just hurry up and get down there.”

Carley did what she was told.

I always do what I’m told.

Right. The good girl, never in trouble, and now—

“What piano teacher?” Emma is asking. “Is she making us take lessons again?”

“Just me, I think.”

“Oh, right. I forgot you’re getting punished, too.” Her sister regards her with an expression Carley has never seen before—not directed at her, anyway: a combination of approval and respect.

Suddenly, Carley feels something akin to just that as she looks at her kid sister.

Being in trouble at school and at home is the story of Emma’s life, yet she always manages to act as though it doesn’t bother her. But how can it not?

This sucks, losing privileges and feeling like no one understands you and the world is against you . . .

Carley isn’t used to it. She’s used to being the good sister.

And I don’t think I can let the bad stuff just roll off me the way Emma does.

“So then
anyway
,” Emma goes on again with her story, “Grandma and Grandpa show up, and they don’t even call first, and they tell Mom and the piano lady that this girl Taylor killed herself, and she goes to your school. Do you know who she is?”

“Yeah. Everyone knows who she is.”

“That’s not what I meant. Do you know who her dad is?”

“Her dad? Why would I—”

“He’s Mom’s old boyfriend!”

“Seriously?”

“That’s what Grandma said. Isn’t that crazy?”

Carley stares at her sister, remembering something Nicki told her a long time ago.

“Is his name Mike? The old boyfriend?”

Emma’s eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah. Why?”

“No reason, I just . . .”

“You knew about him?”

“No. I mean, just that Mom had an old boyfriend named Mike. But I had no idea that he was Taylor’s dad.”

“How did you even know about him and Mom? Did she tell you?”

Emma is jealous, she realizes, imagining some cozy mother-daughter conversation that she wasn’t privy to. To be fair, there have been plenty of those, but . . . not this time.

“Nicki told me that her mom was friends with him, and that he was Mom’s old boyfriend. That’s it.”

“Well now Nicki’s dead, and his daughter’s dead, and you—” Emma breaks off, looking troubled.

“And I what?”

“You
wish
you were dead. You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know . . . like kill yourself or something.”

“
Kill myself?
No! Why would you even . . . God, no!”

“But you said you wanted to.”

“I did not!” Leave it to Emma to put such dramatic words into someone else’s mouth.

“Okay, maybe you didn’t
say
it, but you
wrote
it.”

Carley stares at her. “I did not write it. What are you talking about?”

“On Peeps.”

“Emma, trust me—I did
not
write on Peeps that I wanted to kill myself.”

“Gabe said he saw it on your page.”

“Who the heck is Gabe?”

“My boyfriend. He’s super hot.”

Her
boyfriend
? Dumbfounded, Carley can only shake her head.

“Gabe said he checked out your page. Which means you lied, because you told me you had it set to private, and obviously you don’t, because he could see it. And you obviously have me blocked, because I
can’t
see it.”

“First of all, I do have my page set to private. No one can see anything I write unless I accept a connection request. And trust me, I never got one from some little kid I don’t even know.”

“Gabe’s not a little kid. He’s older than you, and he’s super cool.”

“Cool? Really? I thought you just said he was hot.”

“He
is
hot. And cool.”

“Okay.
Whatever
. . . I never got a request from your hot, cool
boyfriend
.”

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

Yeah. I do.

Carley can’t help it.

She’s never even been out on a date, and Emma has a boyfriend. An older boyfriend, besides.

Come on . . . is it any surprise? Look at Emma.

Look at me.

She catches sight of herself in the fog-free spot in the bathroom mirror. The image is blurry—her glasses are on her bedside table—but not blurry enough to obscure the fleshy face, neck, and upper arms above the towel, acne on her cheeks and shoulders, hair wet and matted . . .

Yuck.

She turns back to her sister. “Em, second of all, I don’t have you blocked. I don’t have anyone blocked.”

“Then why—”

“Look, if someone is lying about this, it’s—”

Don’t say “your boyfriend” again in that snotty tone
, Carley warns herself.
Just don’t. Why put her on the defensive?

“It’s not
me
,” she says instead. “I’m not the one who’s lying.”

“So what does that mean? You think he is?”

“Obviously, since I haven’t even written anything in a while. I’ve been a little busy lately with upsetting stuff, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I
have
noticed. That’s why I was worried! That’s why I thought I should ask. I was just trying to—but, hey, you know what? Forget it. Die if you want to. I really could care less.”

Emma jerks open the door and storms off down the hall.

Shaken, Carley closes the door after her.

People are always warning that the Internet is a dangerous place; that nothing you do online is ever truly private. She’s spent a lot of time on those bullying message boards, perusing the suicide threads, but not because she actually . . .

Die if you want to!

But I
don’t
want to.

Nicki did.

And Taylor did.

Was it a coincidence?

Or some kind of copycat thing?

Maybe, but not . . . not an epidemic. Leave it to Emma to blow it up into something it’s not. You don’t have an epidemic with just two occurrences of something. An epidemic means, what? Dozens? Hundreds? A lot more than two.

And there won’t be any more
, Carley tells herself firmly, if uneasily.
There can’t be any more.

Yet as she turns back to the mirror, reaching for a hairbrush, her sister’s bizarre claim rings in her ears. What kind of guy is Emma mixed up with? Why would he make up something so horrible about Carley?

I should talk to Mom about this
, she thinks—before remembering that she doesn’t really want to talk to Mom about anything. Not right now, while she’s suspended and being punished and trapped in the house—without Internet, without Angel, even—for another whole week.