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

Sisters shouldn’t leave their sisters. It sounds like a bumper sticker, but it feels like a bee sting to the brain. Louise has already decided not to move away when she graduates, because she wouldn’t do that to Addie.

She figures she can get a job waitressing at the Duck-In—she could work nights—and maybe Finn will stay too and work for his father’s plumbing business. In her mind, it looks like a diorama, the kind Addie makes out of shoe boxes with little figurines glued down, all spit-spot. Very neat. As if living in miniature is less messy than life-sized. Even the tiny plastic toilets she puts in the bathrooms never have to be cleaned. That’s a life Louise can see herself living.

“Why so many dioramas?” she’d asked, looking at the twenty different-sized shoe boxes all over Addie’s room. The box the yellow boots had come in was the biggest, and Addie was making a tiny replica of their town out of it. Louise recognized their house and the Carsons’, and the path that led between them. Beyond it were all the right angles that connected the streets of Pigeon Creek. The school, the sledding hill, their church, and the Duck-In, decorated with Christmas lights and a sign that said OPEN 24 HOURS, just like in real life.

“I like to recycle,” said Addie. “Someday people will realize it’s important.”

“Yeah, but it’s so…extensive. And detailed.”

“I notice things.”

“Really?”

“No, Louise, I’m actually a human drone, and this is what you all look like from my perspective.”

“Just asking. Don’t get all panty bunched about it.”

When Louise peered closer she saw that the Nike box that was their house had five little plastic people—two parents, three kids—inside. Her dad had stopped running at least ten years ago, so the box was flimsy and old. The people were all seated around a kitchen table with what looked like roast chicken made of foil smack-dab in the middle of it. She couldn’t remember the last time her family had sat down together for dinner.

On the tablecloth there were dishes drawn with markers and little Tater Tots made of broken bits of wine corks rolling around inside them. A ketchup bottle the size of Louise’s thumbnail was standing nearby. In the bedrooms, every bed had a comforter made of a Bounce dryer sheet cut in half and then decorated with flowers drawn with brightly colored markers, made to look like the ones they all slept under every night. It was astounding how lifelike everything was.

“So these aren’t, like, voodoo dolls of us, are they?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“There’s only five people.”

Addie was focused on making a tiny vase, and she was uncharacteristically quiet.

Louise double-checked the bathrooms on the second floor in case a tiny plastic figurine was in there, constipated or something (that would so be Addie’s speed). She slid open the cardboard pocket door to an exact replica of the bathroom she and Addie shared. But it was empty. She admired the intricately designed sink and shower and tiny rolls of toilet paper—Certs candies—stacked neatly on the back of the toilet.

“Is one of us over in the Carsons’ house? That’s very clever, Addie.”

She looked at the huge yellow rain-boot box that was their town, but it didn’t show the insides of any of the houses, just long strands of real toilet paper connecting all the buildings.

“Someone’s missing, Addie.”

“Stop it, Louise. You overthink everything.”

Addie put her hand on her hip and stuck out her elbow like a handle before Louise could say anything else.

“Nice to meet you, Pot. I’m Kettle.”

Then she bowed deeply at the waist.

Louise groaned.

“Are you ever going to grow up?” she asked.

“Doesn’t seem likely,” said Addie.

Louise’s feet feel heavier than usual as she makes her way to Finn’s, glancing over her shoulder in case Addie has decided to follow. But she wouldn’t. She never does.

Her sneaking-out jacket isn’t really warm enough now that it’s snowing. The conversation about a wildfire smolders in the back of her mind, the way a real fire would smolder this time of year. It felt more like an excuse for Addie to keep Louise home.

Gladys and Izzy had a rule about the car that the girls all shared: Don’t fill it up more than halfway, so that way if you crash and total it you won’t have wasted money on unused gas. But never leave less than half a tank in it for the next person either.

They would pass each other on the stairs and whisper ominously, “The tank is half full,” winking as if they shared a deep, dark secret.

Now that Gladys and Izzy are gone, Louise often leaves it with a quarter tank or less, since she’s the only driver. It’s an old Toyota hatchback with almost three hundred thousand miles on it that needs a Philips screwdriver rather than a key to start. Her feet are more reliable. And she rarely needs to go anywhere that she can’t walk, anyway.

Louise misses her sisters more than she allows herself to acknowledge, but walking over to Finn’s, shivering in her thin jacket, she feels too exposed to fight it and lets herself wallow for a few minutes in the loneliness of being left behind. In her pocket is a condom Izzy “bequeathed” her when she left.

“Those Carson boys are never prepared,” she’d said to Louise knowingly. “And while they are a fun distraction, you do not want to hitch your wagon to them forever. Trust me.”

Izzy had been hopelessly in love with the oldest Carson, Jeremiah, and Louise wondered two things about her sister’s sage advice: Had Izzy really not wanted to be hitched to his wagon forever? And did he pass on some intimate knowledge of “those McQuillen girls” to his brothers, the way her sisters had done for her?

Gladys had said, “The McQuillen–Carson pipeline. Don’t even bother signing up. All roads lead to the same place.” Still, she tossed one of those black-and-white photo strips of herself and Markus, the third oldest—into her suitcase when she left.