The Last House on Needless Street Page 5

  ‘You’re thinking about Greg in homeroom,’ Lulu says. ‘You want to French kiss with him.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Dee said with rising fury. ‘You’ve been reading my diary. You little snoop.’ If Lulu told Mom and Dad about the Greg thing, they would be mad. They might even reconsider the conservatory. Dee was due to start at Pacific in September. But she had to prove she could behave herself. That meant no boys, good grades, keeping to curfew and looking after her little sister.

  ‘Don’t, DeeDee,’ Lulu said. ‘You’re not supposed to yell at me.’ Her voice had gone up an octave and she sounded much younger. She knew that she had gone too far.

  ‘That’s it. Back to Mom and Dad. I don’t know why I even try with you …’

  ‘I don’t want to go back yet! I’m still thirsty, and I want to pet the kitty.’

  ‘You’ve had a drink of water and there’s no kitty here,’ Dee said. But for a moment she thought she saw a black tail like a question mark, disappearing behind a trash can. Black cats were supposed to be bad luck. Or was it good luck?

  Lulu looked up at her sister with wide eyes. ‘Don’t be mean,’ she said quietly.

  They walked back in silence. Lulu put her hand into Dee’s, and Dee took it because there were so many people around, but she held it as loosely as she could and didn’t return the squeeze. Lulu’s face was screwed up with sorrow. Her hurt made Dee feel good. Her heart was pounding. She thought of the diary, where she kept it in the floor vent. She screwed the vent back down each time. Lulu must have looked for it for a long time. She must have taken a screwdriver from Dad’s toolbox to open the vent, read the diary, screwed the vent back up again … The thought made Dee want to slap her sister, see her cry. Lulu could ruin her life if she wanted.

  Dee had wanted to go to Pacific since she was five. It had taken eleven years of pleading to get her parents to agree. It was mixed, boys and girls. Dee would live in a dorm at the school. Her parents’ anxiety radiated off them whenever this fact was mentioned. Dee could see them half hoping that something would happen to prevent it. Her behaviour had to be perfect.

  ‘I won’t tell, Dee Dee,’ said Lulu. ‘I swear. And I won’t read it again.’ But Dee shook her head. Of course Lulu would tell, in the end. She might not mean to, but she would. She was like that. Dee would have to bury the diary in a random trash can and say Lulu was inventing things. She hoped that would be enough.

  Lulu settled in the shade of the umbrella by Mom’s feet. Mom dozed with her magazine clutched to her breast. Dad sat in the striped canvas chair reading his book and rubbing his eyes. He was tired too; his head nodded.

  Lulu started digging with her bucket and spade, mouth pursed. ‘I found a pretty pebble,’ she announced. ‘You want it, Dee Dee?’ She offered it on the flat of her palm, eyes anxious.

  Dee ignored her. ‘Can I go swim?’ she asked her father.

  ‘Half an hour,’ he said. ‘If you’re not back by then I’m calling the cops.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dee said. When his back was turned she rolled her eyes for form’s sake, but actually she was surprised. He must be exhausted. He wouldn’t normally let her wander unsupervised.

  ‘Not so fast, Delilah,’ she heard her mother call. ‘You take your sister with you.’

  Dee was a plausible distance away and she hurried on, pretending not to have heard. She wandered through the hedge maze of colourful blankets, beach umbrellas and windbreakers. She didn’t know what, or who she was looking for, just that it was important to be alone so that things could happen.

  She tried to move through the crowd like it was a dance. She put a reason behind each step she took. Dee had danced the part of the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland at the end of the semester in her ballet class. She still remembers how the steps, the chaînés, arabesques and développés became something different the moment she felt like a caterpillar. So now each step she took was a dance, heading towards a great romance. She imagined people (boys) watching her as she passed, though she couldn’t see anyone actually watching. She imagined their thoughts. How long and glossy her hair was, how different she seemed to other girls, how mysterious, as if she had a secret. She imagined it really hard so that the other thoughts didn’t come in, like about how her butt was too big and her chin was a weird shape.

  She picked her way to the shoreline and sat down in the damp sand at the water’s edge. In the shallows was a flotilla of bobbing toddlers in water wings. Farther out, by the buoys, the lake was still, showing back the treeline and the sky in dark, upside-down perfection. She could imagine monsters out there, lurking just below the sleek green surface. The air smelled of burgers grilling and Dee made her yeeeugh face. Her thing at the moment was to despise food. It seemed important to maintain it, even if only to herself. Ballerinas don’t eat burgers.

  ‘Hi.’ Something loomed over her, throwing a tall shadow. Then it sat down, scuffing sand, and became human-sized. It was a guy. He was thin, yellow-headed. She could see swirls of white lotion on his pale skin.

  ‘Hi,’ said Dee. He had to be at least nineteen. She was suddenly aware that her palms were sweating and her heart was beating nervous and light. What would they talk about?

  ‘I’m Trevor,’ he said, and offered a hand to shake, which was very dorky and made Dee smirk. But she was also relieved because it made him seem familiar, what her mother would call ‘raised right’.

  Dee lifted one eyebrow, something she had just learned to do. ‘How’s it hanging?’ She didn’t take his hand.

  Trevor blushed. ‘OK,’ he said, wiping his hand on his shorts as if that was what he meant to do all along. ‘Are you here with your folks?’

  Dee shrugged. ‘I managed to lose them,’ she said.

  He smiled, like he appreciated the joke. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘All the way over by the lifeguard stand,’ she said, pointing. ‘They were sleeping and I was bored.’

  ‘Your parents?’

  ‘And my little sister.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Six,’ Dee said. She didn’t want to talk about her family any more. ‘Where do you go to school?’

  ‘UW,’ he said.

  ‘Cool.’ So he was in college. ‘I go to Pacific,’ she said. It was nearly true.

  ‘Cool,’ he said, and she saw the interest warm his eyes. Guys liked ballerinas, she had discovered. They were feminine and mysterious. ‘You want to go get some ice cream?’ Trevor said.

  Dee considered, shrugged, got up and dusted the sand off.

  Trevor got up too then said, ‘Um, you have a thing on you. On the back of your shorts.’

  Dee twisted her head round to look. There was a dark stain on the white denim. Dee said, ‘Oh, I must have sat on something.’ She took her T-shirt off and tied it round her waist. ‘You go ahead. I’ll meet you there.’

  She hurried to the women’s restrooms, where there was a queue. People were taking their little kids into the stall with them, sometimes three at a time, and then they all had to go. It was taking a really long time. Dee could feel everything getting worse as she waited. She felt a snail of blood crawl down her inner thigh. She pulled out fistfuls of paper towel and swabbed at it. Eventually she said to the big, sweating woman in front of her, ‘Um, do you by any chance have a sanitary pad?’

  The woman stared at her. ‘There’s a machine,’ she said. ‘Right there on the wall.’

  Dee left her place in line and went to the machine. It only took quarters. She had a dollar and some dimes. ‘Does anyone have change for a dollar?’

  A woman with a red-faced baby on her shoulder said, ‘Where’s your mom? She should be taking care of you.’

  ‘Does anyone here have change, please?’ Dee made her tone sarcastic and a little angry, so that they wouldn’t see that she was literally about to cry.

  A lady with a blonde bob gave her four quarters. But the machine was broken and the quarters tinkled back into the slot again and again. Blinking back tears, Dee returned them to
the lady.

  She cleaned herself up as best she could. The women in line watched as Dee rinsed her shorts in the sink. Jesus, she was just in her bathing suit like everyone else. She kept the T-shirt round her waist. It hid everything, so that was OK. She joined the line again and waited.

  When she got to the ice-cream place Trevor wasn’t there. She gave it a few minutes, but she knew he wasn’t coming. Maybe she took too long in the restroom and he gave up. But probably he didn’t want to buy ice cream for a girl who didn’t even know when her period was coming.

  She left the T-shirt on the shore and waded out, past the toddlers in water wings, knee-deep, then to her thighs, then her waist. She felt safer right away – hidden. In the heat of the day the cool lake water was like a sudden plummet, a shock that sent pinpricks up her spine. She trailed her fingertips on the broken mirrored surface, the skin of the water. The lake moved about her like a slow beast. She went deeper until the water lapped her chin and the gentle swell threatened to lift her feet from the stony bottom. Her cramps were almost pleasurable, now, with the cold water and the sunshine and the distant roar of the summer crowd on the shore, the sound travelling eerie across the water. It didn’t matter, suddenly, that the boy hadn’t come back. Her body seemed like enough company. Lately its moods fascinated her. It behaved in new and surprising ways, like a friend she didn’t know well yet. Pain and pleasure both had new faces. She was a story being told each minute. Dee closed her eyes under the lake’s cold caress. Everything was happening now.

  Something smooth glanced against her cheek. Again, again, like a playful push. Dee opened her eyes. Dark grey and black scales filled her vision, flowing. She held her breath. The snake’s body was sunk a little beneath the surface but it held its head up, somewhat above the water, like a swan. The snake circled her slowly and curiously. It brushed her arm once as it swam. It was probably attracted to her body heat. What kind was it? Dee forced her juddering brain to think. It looked like a cottonmouth but surely you didn’t get them around here. Another idea kept trying to slide into her mind and she had to work very hard to keep it out. Rattlesnake. It was then she realised there were two more heads periscoping out of the water to her left, then three or four. They were a group, a family perhaps. Several juveniles, young mature snakes and a large adult with its ancient head, its broad lipless smile. Exactly how many there were she could not say – her heart had stopped. A blunt head swooped gracefully towards her face. Dee closed her eyes and thought, This is it, the end. She waited for the needle fangs, the poison, for the carrion mouth to close on her. She thought she felt the feather kiss of a tongue on her jaw. Her life was thunder in her ears. She tried to hold herself still against the swell of the water, to be nothing alive, to be stone. Something brushed against her shoulder in a long caress.

  Dee didn’t know how long she stood there, time had expanded and collapsed. When at last she opened her eyes the water was smooth and empty. Maybe they were gone. But maybe they were writhing about her arms and legs out of sight, under the water. She seemed to feel their touch all over her body. She began to shiver uncontrollably, head baking in the bright day. Her legs buckled and she sank and gasped, mouth filling with tin. She turned and waded for the shore, water grabbing her, slowing her to a deathly pace. She could still feel them garlanding her limbs.

  Dee reached the shore. She ploughed out of the water and the weight of her body descended on her again. She staggered and fell. The sand was good underneath, against her side. She made herself into a ball and cried, unobserved, among the running sunburned kids.

  Dee slowly picked her way back through blankets and umbrellas. The air was hot with sugar and the sand sucked at her ankles. She didn’t have her watch on but she knew she’d been gone longer than half an hour. All she wanted now was the sanctuary of her family. Her mother would shudder, cry out and take Dee in her arms. Lulu would look scared and excited at the same time and ask over and over, How many snakes? What kind? And her father would be furious, ask what the hell the lifeguard had been doing, and Dee would bask in the warmth of his anger, knowing she was cared for. It would become a story, one they all told in hushed voices sometimes. Do you remember when Dee Dee got attacked by the snakes? The story would live outside her then, and no longer run cold in her bones.

  Even from a distance, Dee could see that that her parents were freaking out. Mom was screaming and Dad was shouting. Two lifeguards were there, and other men talking into radios. Dee cringed. How embarrassing. She was only a little late, for God’s sake.

  As she came closer, she heard her father saying, ‘I just fell asleep for a minute. A minute.’

  Dee came up to the blanket and sat down in the shade. ‘Mom?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘Quiet, Dee, please. Your father is trying to make these people do something.’ Her mother’s mouth trembled. Mascara ran down her face like black blood. ‘Lulu!’ She stood suddenly and screamed it out. Heads nearby turned. ‘Lulu!’ her mother screamed again.

  ‘She has short hair,’ Dad is saying over and over. ‘People often think she’s a boy. She won’t grow it.’

  Dee realised two things: first, they hadn’t noticed how long she had been gone; and second, Lulu wasn’t there. She sighed and tucked her hair behind her ear. The cramps were really bad now. She felt a stir of feeling. Lulu was being dramatic again. Now no one would comfort Dee and take the story of the snakes away.

  As the long, hot afternoon wore on, more people came, and the real police. ‘Laura Walters, Lulu for short,’ everyone kept saying into radios, and then they started saying it to everyone on the shore, through the big speaker on the pole by the hotdog stand. ‘Laura Walters, six years old, brown hair, hazel eyes. Wearing a bathing suit, denim shorts and a red tank top.’ It was only in the dusk, as the park emptied, that Dee began to understand that they weren’t going to find Lulu that day. It took her much longer to understand that they would never find her. She had gone who knew where, with who knew whom, and she didn’t come back.

  Some weeks later, many miles away, a family from Connecticut found a white flip-flop mixed up in their beach stuff. No one could say how it got there, or even if it was Lulu’s. It had been through the laundry with their clothes.

  Lulu would be seventeen, now. Is, Dee corrects herself. Lulu is seventeen.

  The last thing Lulu said to Dee was, I found a pretty pebble. Some days all Dee can think about is that pebble. What did it look like? Was it smooth or rough, grey or black? Was it sharp and angular or did it fill Lulu’s small palm with its round weight? Dee will never know, because she got up and walked away without a glance.

  The Walters family stayed in Washington for a month, hoping for news. But there was nothing for them to do and her father’s boss was losing patience. So they went back to Portland. The house was strange without Lulu. Dee could never remember to lay three places for dinner, not four, and it always made her mother cry.

  Her mother left soon after. Dee knew she couldn’t stand the sight of Dee, the pale copy of her lost daughter. She emptied the checking account and was gone. Dee couldn’t blame her, although her father felt differently. Then the other thing happened.

  The night before, snow fell like ash from the quiet sky. Her father was building a model airplane below in the living room. Dee could smell the epoxy drifting up the stairs. He would sit there for hours, until his eyes were red-rimmed with fumes. He would not come up to bed until the night was almost worn out. I’ll talk to him tomorrow, Dee thought. I have to.

  She was a term late for Pacific, but she could catch up. Money was tight, but she could get a job, couldn’t she? Her father didn’t need her to make model airplanes and stare into the dark, after all. Dee breathed through the guilt that stabbed at her. The air was laden with mingled scents of hot glue and despair. She thought, This cannot be my life. This is a ghost life. Tears traced burning lines down her cheeks.

  In the morning Dee made the special coffee to take to her father in bed. The speci
al coffee was made with the fancy glass thing from San Francisco, and it took a long time to drip through. It was bitter and gritty like river sediment and her father loved it. Maybe he put all his love into the coffee maker because the bigger things were too painful. Dee hated the coffee maker because it reminded her of when they were all together. She poured the scalding water over the coffee grounds. The dark-brown scent filled the kitchen. This morning she was going to speak to him, she really was.

  She pulled back her long sleeve and poured a little boiling water over her wrist, gasping. She watched the bracelet of red blisters rise on her flesh. That helped. She let the sleeve fall down to hide it, and finished putting everything on the tray. She would tell him today. He would be mad, he would be hurt. But she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. Pretty pebble.

  She went into her father’s room and put the tray on the table. She thought it would put him in a good mood, if the scent of coffee led him out of sleep. She opened the curtains to the white world. Houses, mailboxes, cars – the edges of everything were blunted with white snow. She turned to say, Look how much fell in the night! Then she saw him. His body lay very straight in bed, still in the blinding snowlight. His face wore an expression that for a moment she could not place. Then she recognised it as a welcome.

  It was a stroke, they said. They didn’t say it was brought on by Lulu’s vanishing, and then Dee’s mother leaving. They didn’t need to. So the person who took Lulu also took Dee’s mother, and then her father. Dee was taken too. For how much of her remains, after everything? She feels like a big, dark, empty room.

  There was no ballet school because there was no money to pay for it. She didn’t finish high school either. Dee got a job at the drugstore. But she had her real work, which was to look for the person who took her sister. All the men who had been at the lake that day, all the glances, the roll call of suspects. They are her job now.

  She calls tired Karen each week, sometimes more. Tired Karen is the detective in charge of Lulu’s case and she always sounds both exhausted and frantic. Her face is expressive; it shows all the hurt she has seen; every back she has patted, every tissue handed over, every screaming face pushed close to hers.