Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (general ebook reader .TXT) 📗

father often uses when he’s trying to get his daughters to “wake up and listen.”

“I heard her slamming drawers and throwing things into the closet, saying she didn’t care anymore, the boots had ruined her bleepity-bleepity-bleepity-bleeping trip.”

“Whoa.”

“Right?” Addie is pleased that news of her mother swearing has made Louise stop fussing with her eyelashes for half a second.

“What did she say after that?”

“She said something about how she hated Seattle, the people, the rain, all of it.”

Louise goes back to her mascara. She hadn’t understood why they’d chosen Seattle for a second honeymoon. But she couldn’t care less what her parents did anyway.

“Speaking of straws, I heard we shouldn’t use them anymore. One day they’re going to find one in the nose of a turtle. Plastic will destroy the world.”

Where does she come up with this stuff? Just keep talking, Addie. I am so out of here.

“Are you going over to Finn Carson’s?” Addie asks, smearing muddy water all over Louise’s wall.

“None of your beeswax,” says Louise, wondering if Addie is telepathic.

Yes, I am going over to Finn Carson’s and I’m going to lose the rest of my virginity, not that you need to know that.

“I heard that earwax can actually make you go deaf if you let it build up.”

Good. Not telepathic.

Louise should have known that her putting mascara on right before bed would not go unnoticed by her attentive little sister. But in spite of Addie’s tornado personality, Louise knows she would never tell.

The real challenge is not being noticed on the other end, at Finn’s house. He has six brothers, and one of them is a real pain in Louise’s ass. Finn’s twin, Nate. Of course the boy she likes would have a twin. Her older sisters hadn’t had to deal with that when they each fell for one of the Carson boys, the twinless ones.

With seven boys in the Carson house and four girls in hers, Louise is aware that sneaking over to the Carsons’ has become a bit of a cliché. She’d like to do something that isn’t seen as following in her sisters’ footsteps, but what choice does she have when the only path to anything exciting is the one they’ve created?

The next most exciting thing Louise and her sisters ever did was get really, really good at tp-ing houses. They called it Charmin bombing. They did it a lot. Louise could encircle entire carports without breaking the roll. Gladys could do a fifty-foot tree without a ladder or a boost. Izzy somehow did the insides of houses while people slept, and they would not wake up. She left her initials on their cheeks and drew mustaches on them with red lipstick and still never once got caught.

Addie hasn’t figured out what she might be good at yet.

The McQuillen sisters are proof that in a small town, teenagers are always and never bored.

Mr. Carson loved that he never had to buy toilet paper— thanks to Louise and her sisters he’d acquired hundreds of rolls, probably, over the years. He put it in his bathroom, wrapping it into fat loops that looked like giant fluffy rolls of cotton candy next to the toilet.

“Give me back my goddamn toilet paper,” Louise’s father would demand, standing in the church parking lot, lowering his voice because the statue of Mary was nearby, eyeing him askance from under her blue veil.

“I believe it’s on my property, and you have a bigger problem than toilet paper if you can’t keep your daughters in line,” Mr. Carson would bark back at him, also glancing at Mary.

It was all part of their routine, their shtick while smoking cigarettes after Mass. Louise’s father complaining that with four girls he went through a hell of a lot of toilet paper, even when he wasn’t chasing it around the neighborhood; Mr. Carson saying he couldn’t help it if Mr. McQuillen’s daughters and toilet paper always ended up at his house.

It was a crumbling town, held loosely together by these routines and miles and miles of toilet paper hung in the trees like prayer flags. Catholics aren’t normally ones to summon God with prayer flags, but Louise figured they needed whatever help they could get.

“Louise?”

Addie’s fingers are shaking her gently by the shoulder.

“What time is it? Oh, no, no, no, no.”

“Coyote Jones says there’s a wildfire over near Beaver Junction.”

Louise rolls over to find Addie’s face so close she can smell her bubblegum-flavored toothpaste.

“That’s not very close,” she says. “Your face, however, that’s close. You are a fire in my face.”

“I can smell smoke.”

“I just smell toothpaste.”

“I think you should stay home.”

“I am home. I was asleep.”

Dammit, how could she have fallen asleep?

“But you were planning to leave.”

Addie knowingly plucks the collar of Louise’s corduroy jacket. Her sneaking-out jacket.

Louise wishes she had more secrets. Better secrets. Any secrets.

“I was cold.”

“You won’t be when the fire gets here.”

“It’s not going to get here.”

“Should we fill up the gas tank?”

“What? Why?”

“In case we have to evacuate quickly.”

“It’s winter, Addie. There is no fire.”

“A fire can burn uphill at forty miles per hour.”

“Stop listening to Coyote Jones. He’s bad for your mental health. Now go back to bed.”

“He knows things,” Addie whispers icily in Louise’s ear, making her shiver.

When she opens her eyes, Addie is gone.

On her way out, carrying her boots and sliding along quietly in her socks, Louise pauses by Addie’s door, leaning her ear against it. She should peek in and make sure Addie isn’t mad or worried, but she’s already so late. Finn must think she’s blown him off. Addie’s probably asleep, anyway; it’s deathly quiet on the other side of the door. Either that or she’s still tuned in to Coyote Jones’s radio channel in her big fat headphones. Louise has always thought the self-proclaimed weather guy was a quack. She moves guiltily past.

She shuffles even more quietly past the closed door to Gladys’s room, because that’s where her father sleeps now, ever since the “second honeymoon.” Louise misses her sisters more than she misses her parents getting