What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (15 page)

“Carrie? You coming?” Cricket calls for me from down a dark hall. I follow the sound to a door with cutout words made into signs stuck to the outside:
STAY AWAY
and
KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING
and
CRICKET’S CRIB
tacked up alongside a poster-size butterfly in rainbow colors.

“Hey,” I say, pushing the door open to a room full of pillows and stuffed animals enough for every kid in my school to have one and then some left over. It feels like I walked straight into a circus,
what with so many
things
laying ever-where. I have to step over a stack of books to get to the middle of the room that’s even got a window seat.

“Wow,” I say.

“It’s a total disaster zone,” Cricket says. “My mom’s going to kill me if I don’t clean it up tonight. Ugh!”

I’m so busy noticing all the brightly colored clothes crammed into her closet I don’t realize I’m saying out loud what I’m thinking inside until I hear my own voice say, “Y’all are
rich
.”

“No, we’re not,” she says.

“Are too.”

“I’m not usually this messy,” Cricket says. She kicks some clothes into a pile in the corner then falls back onto her bed and puts her hands behind her head, staring up like she’s counting clouds. “Hey, check it out: I put these up a couple of nights ago.”

I lay down on her soft bed, careful to keep my grimy feet off her bedspread, which smells so clean and pretty. Ever-thing’s clean in this house. I feel bad, like I’m tracking in the dirt from my life, messing up theirs.

“I like those stars you got on your ceiling,” I say.

“Thanks. They glow in the dark. My dad gave them to me for Christmas one year. I had them in my room in my other house and I know it’s stupid and all but I thought I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without them overhead so I peeled them off and stuck them up here. Watch.”

She turns off the lamp by the side of her bed and crosses the room to untie the curtains so it’s nearly nighttime dark.

“Look up,” she whispers.

It’s the prettiest thing I ever seen inside a home. Her whole room feels like the outdoors, like we’re camping and sleeping under the big sky.

“It’s nice, right?” she says.

“It’s like a magic land,” I say. “So pretty. I’d never have a single
nightmare if I slept under glow-in-the-dark stars like these. You’re so lucky.”

The lights come back on and she moves around the room, picking up more clothes and tossing them into a hamper, putting her things in order.

“I love your room,” I say. “It’s so big! I cain’t believe you have it all to yourself. Or, wait, your sister probably shares with you. Duh.”

“My sister’s, um, oh, never mind. It used to be my uncle’s room when he was little. He and my mom grew up in this house. So did my granddaddy and his daddy before him. Lots of Chaplins lived here. Blah blah blah—booor-ring! Let’s put on some music. What do you listen to? Here, let me find—I can’t find my iPod—wait, did I take it with me today? Uh-oh. If I lost it I’ll die a thousand deaths I swear.”

I watch her zigzag around, dig through her backpack, open drawers, rifle through the hamper she just filled, looking like a dog digging a hole in the sand the way she flings clothes back out one by one in her search for what I don’t know.

“Here it is! That was close. My mom would’ve totally
killed
me if I ruined another one,” she says, moving lickety-split back over to her painted-pink desk. “Okay, what do you wanna hear? I got Gwen Stefani—wait, what about Miley? I bet you like Miley Cyrus, right? I used to love her when I was younger, that’s why I still have her on here. No offense, I mean she’s fine and all but—Ooooh, here! Maroon 5! Why’re you looking like that? Don’t even tell me you don’t like them. Don’t even say it. Everyone loves Maroon 5.”

I don’t have any earthly idea who she’s talking about or what the thing in her hand is that she’s looking down at. It’s about the size of a box of cigarettes but thinner and it clicks every time she touches it. It’s bright pink like just about ever-thing else in her room: the pillows, a blanket, the round rug in front of her bed, and, like I mentioned, her desk.

“What’s that?” I ask her.

She looks up from it and glances around to see what I’m asking her about.

“What’s what?” she asks.

“That,” I say. “That pink thing you got in your hand.”

She looks down at it then back up at me like she doesn’t understand my question then something blooms on her face, like it just took her a minute to catch up with my words.

“Oh-Em-Gee, you don’t know what
this
is?” she asks, holding it up just to make sure she’s on the right path. “For
real
? You’re kidding, right.”

I shake my head no, I’m not kidding.

“It’s an
iPo
d!” she says. Like now it should make sense.

“What’s an eye-pod?”

“Oh-Em-Gee.” She keeps spelling out letters that don’t make any word I ever knew. “Okay,
this
is an iPod. It’s got music on it … Here, come sit on the bed and I’ll show you. I never met anyone who didn’t know about iPods. iTunes lets you store any song in the universe. Here in the music library.”

She goes on to explain it ever which way she can and I nod and say, “Oh, yeah, okay I get it,” but really I don’t get it one bit. Then she goes and plugs it into this box on her desk, hits a button, and music’s booming through the room from that one thin little thing she held in her hand just a second ago!

“So who do you like and I bet I have them on here,” she yells over the song.

I find myself wishing I spoke her language and then I realize she’s speaking English, just not in any kind of sense. She’s watching me and I can feel my cheeks get hot. I’m gonna blow it. I want to cry because I know in a few minutes she won’t like me anymore and I’ll be back where I was in the mountains. No friends. I cain’t let that happen again. She don’t even know me yet—for all she knows I was the coolest kid in my whole entire school. Think,
Carrie. Think, think … say something. Anything, just say anything. What is wrong with me? Oh Lordy.

“You okay?” Cricket says, turning down the music. Her eyebrows tilt up in worry. “You look like you don’t feel so good again. Here, I’ll show you the bathroom in case you need to hurl again or whatever. Follow me.”

I never had someone hold my hand like she is. And she doesn’t think it’s weird or anything—she took my hand like it’s totally normal, and I for some reason, probably because I’m a
half-wit
like Momma says, I want to cry. From being happy! Things are all backwards and upside down in this house.

The bathroom is right next to her room. It’s got flowered wallpaper and hundreds of different-size bottles of lotions and potions covering every inch of space beside the sink. Nail polish in every color. And the toilet seat has a sweater on that’s the same pink as in her room. The toilet seat!

“There you go,” Cricket says, moving aside to let me in. “Sorry you don’t feel well. I hate that. You want me to get my mom? No? You sure? She’s really good when people are sick. She doesn’t mind at all, don’t worry.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’m okay.”

“All right,” Cricket says. “Just holler if you need me.”

She closes the door. There’s a pink robe hanging on the back of the door that must be hers because it smells like a rose patch. She is without a doubt my number one favorite human being I ever met in my whole entire life. She’s so pretty and nice and her momma’s great—even better than Mrs. Bickett, my old best friend Orla Mae’s momma, who used to bake us cookies and sometimes even have me to supper. And look at all she has. I touch ever-thing, undoing the tops of some of the bottles and sniffing—most of it is pretty-smelling but some is like the pure grain alcohol Mr. Wilson took nips of back in Hendersonville. She’s got tons of photographs taped up on all sides of the mirror. Her in sports
uniforms. Her with a bunch of other kids. Her with her momma and a man I bet is her daddy and a girl—oh Lordy, that must be her sister, Caroline. The one they say looks just like me and you know what? She does. It’s like
I’m
in the picture with them. I try to find other pictures of Caroline with Cricket. There’s one of the two of them wearing matching dresses in front of a Christmas tree. I trace the outline of them and close my eyes to help bring up the piney smell of the tree. Caroline looks like she’s a few inches taller than Cricket, which makes sense on account of her being older. I stand on my tippy-toes to see if maybe that makes us look even more alike. She’s skinny, like me. She’s smiling in every single picture. Real smiles too. Not the kind where the mouth’s turned up in the shape of a smile but the eyes stay cold. Like the one picture I saw from when Momma married Richard. If you look real close you can see that even though the bottom half of Momma’s face is in smile-shape the top half is stone-cold. Richard has his arm around Momma and looks like he just heard a funny joke. But Momma has empty eyes. Dead eyes.

Nothing about Cricket is empty. Cricket’s the opposite of empty—I never seen someone so full of smiles and words.

“You doing okay in there?” she calls through the door. Her voice gives me such a start I nearly break the perfume bottle I’m smelling.

“I’m fine! I’ll be right out!” I call back.

I give the toilet a flush to make like I used it and I wash my hands because Mrs. Bickett said to always wash up after
relieving yourself
. That’s what she called going number one:
relieving yourself
. Oh my goodness, even Cricket’s soap smells pink.

“Hey,” I say, coming back into her room. She’s at her desk bent over something.

“Hey. You all right?” she asks me.

I never seen someone wait for an answer to that question, looking like they really wonder after your health and all.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry. Hey, I like all them pictures you got up of your family. Is that your sister and you? In front of the Christmas tree?”

“What? Oh. The one of us in matching nighties? Yeah. That’s us about six years ago. Before she got sick the last time.”

“Those are nightgowns? Wow,” I say. “I thought they were dresses they’re so fancy. Wait, your sister—she’s sick?”

“What’s that?”

“Where is your sister? Y’all don’t hang out together I guess,” I say. Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. It’s just that I cain’t think what else to say to keep her talking about Caroline, the girl that looks exactly like me. There’s a family picture in a frame by Cricket’s bed and I pick it up to see it closer.

“My sister died,” Cricket says. “Three years ago today.”

No wonder they were staring at me like I was a ghost.

“Oh” is all I can think of to say. Another dumb comment from me. “Hey, what’s that?”

“It’s my laptop, what do you think?” She smiles and turns back to it, her fingers pecking at the machine. “Don’t even tell me you never saw a laptop before or I’ll die of, like, shock or something.”

“This is the nicest place I ever been in, your house,” I say. “Where I come from this is better than the White House even. The
president
could live here and not even know the difference. You’re so lucky y’all are rich.”

“Nuh-uh, we’re not,” she says. “If we were rich we wouldn’t be living here at my grandma’s.”

“Look at all the stuffed animals you got,” I say, picking up this real cute teddy bear holding a heart that reads “Get Well Soon.”

“Oh, yeah, well, some of those are my sister’s from all the hospital times,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at them for a split second then turning back.

“Um, wait, let me just close this window,” she says. “Okay, sorry.”

“You’re lucky you had a sister. I mean, for so many years. I dream of having a sister,” I say. It’s not a full-on lie since I
do
dream about Emma all the time. “So how’d she—? I mean, what happened with your sister?”

“My grandma says it’s because God didn’t finish making her,” Cricket says, shrugging while she twirls her chair to face me. “She had this rare kind of cancer. A form of leukemia, which Grandma says is because she came out before He was done making final touches on her. So the doctors had to go in and try to finish the job.
God withdrew His hand too soon
, she says. It’s so funny, the way she says it. She’s great, my grandma. You’ll meet her in a sec. She’s right downstairs. This is her house. Wait, duh, I just told you that. Anyway, she says Caroline had to go back to her Maker and that someday we’ll see her again. And then you show up.”

I take care moving around Cricket’s backpack that’s wide open, books spilling out … Wait! Lookee here!

“You’ve got the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
? I
love
the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. You think I could borrow it sometime?”

“What? Oh, no way. I love the encyclopedia too! It’s, like, the best set of books
ever
. My dad got me and Caroline started on it when we were little. He said the Internet knows some stuff but you can’t trust it and anyway the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
knows it all. He’s such a dork, my dad is. But kinda in a good way, you know? Anyway, he used to read to us from it. Just weird stuff. Then, when Caroline, um, well—I just decided I’d keep doing it. Looking up and memorizing all the things I can so I can tell her all about it when I see her again. That’s from the library, though. It’s not, like,
mine
or something. And it’s just the
L
, which I was
going
to take back today to trade for the
M
but my mom said we
couldn’t
which is
ridiculous
because we
totally
could have, it doesn’t take but a second but whatever. Hey, come here, I’ve gotta show you something.”

She’s a whirligig, twirling around in her chair, waving me over, hunching back over her
laptop
.

I bring the
L
with me. I love the thin pages. And the smell of it. It opens to “Lilacs,” which are some of my favorite flowers ever. It’s a sign we’re supposed to be true-blue friends forever and ever, me and Cricket.