The Last House on Needless Street(76)

‘Is this your little sister?’

‘She ran after me,’ Dee says. ‘I couldn’t stop her.’ Lulu swings, bored, from Dee’s hand. She says something to herself under her breath. She squints in the sun, eyes serious and far away. In one sweaty palm she clutches her straw sun hat with the pink ribbon tied around it.

‘How old is she?’

‘Six,’ Dee says. ‘Put your hat on or you’ll burn,’ she tells Lulu.

‘No.’ Lulu loves her hat but it is an object to be treasured, not worn.

Loathing strokes Dee, feather light. Why does she have such an annoying family? She takes the hat from her sister and puts it roughly on her head. Lulu’s face crumples.

Trevor bends down and addresses Lulu. ‘You want to go get some ice cream?’

Lulu nods twenty or thirty times.

Dee considers, shrugs. They queue. Trevor and Dee don’t get ice cream. Lulu gets chocolate, which Dee knows will spread all over her face and clothes, and then her mother will scream at them both. But right now she finds that she does not care. Trevor’s hand hangs a millimetre from hers, then brushes, finger to finger. Something is coming, it is in the air like heat haze, like thunder.

Dee does not argue when Trevor steers them away from the ice-cream stand, through from the burger-scented, colourful crowds, towards the trees. Dee thinks of what her parents would say, but defiance wins out. Just this once, she thinks, I want to do something all my own.

In the pine-striped shadows the three of them move soft as tigers. The crowded beach falls behind them quickly, is lost in the tapestry of hushing leaves. Soon there is only the sound of the black water kissing stones. They track the pebbled shore, climbing over rocks, fallen branches, nests of briars. Even Lulu is quiet, excited, possessed by the sense of trespass. Her white flip-flops are too flimsy for the rough terrain. But she doesn’t complain as her feet and ankles become beaded with scratches. The yellow-headed boy lifts Lulu when she cannot get over.

Dee grows impatient. She pushes on ahead, pulling him by the hand. They come to a place where the trees open out somewhat, where the pine needles look soft and there aren’t too many thorns. A rock shaped like a canoe pushes out into the water. Dee and the boy look at one another. The time has come for whatever is coming.

‘I want to go home,’ Lulu says, scrubbing one eye with a fist. Her cheeks are pink, sunstruck. Somewhere in the shadowed pines she has lost her hat.

‘You can’t,’ Dee tells her sister. ‘You followed me so now you have to wait. And if you tell about this, I’ll say you’re lying. Now go play by the lake.’ Lulu bites her lip and looks like she might cry. She doesn’t, though. She knows Dee is still mad at her, so she does what she is told.

Dee turns to the boy. What is his name again? Her heart is racing. She knows she is risking everything. Lulu is a true tattle-tale. Doesn’t matter, she tells herself. This is real, it is happening. She will figure out how to silence her sister.

The boy leans in close. Now he is no longer a face but a series of features, giant and individual. His lips are wet and trembling. Dee thinks, Is this French kissing? There are moments, flashes of excitement which make it seem like they are just about to get good at it, but then they both miss the moment and it goes on, mouths pushed against one another, spitty and loose. He tastes faintly of hot dog. Dee thinks maybe it doesn’t get good until you do the other stuff so she puts his hand up her top. Her bathing suit is a little wet and his hand is warm. It’s nice, so she considers that a success. Next, his hand makes its way into the tight confines of her denim shorts. It is too tight, his hand gets stuck there, so she unbuttons them and wriggles them down. They are both still for a moment, aware that they are moving quickly into unfamiliar territory. She giggles because it is so weird to be in her swimsuit in a forest with a boy looking at her.

Dee hears a sound. It is like a spoon tapping an egg, just once. Dee pulls her shorts up, calling, ‘Lulu?’ There is no answer. Dee runs towards the shore. The boy follows her, stumbling on his jeans.

Lulu is lying half in and half out of the lapping waves, submerged to the waist, as if she was trying to dive back onto land. Blood clouds and blooms in the water. Dee is not aware of jumping in, but somehow she is standing, waist deep in the water, beside her sister’s small form. The sound it made was quiet, but her skull must have hit the boulder with great force. It is dented, as if punched by a fist. Dee tries not to look at that part.

She presses her lips to Lulu’s and breathes, in a half-remembered impression of first-aid classes at school. But she thinks it’s too late. Lulu’s skin is changing, even as Dee watches. Her face grows pale and waxy. Threads of blood trickle out of her hair. They look kind of like red birds in flight; the way children draw birds, lines against a white sky.

The yellow-headed boy whose name Dee still cannot recall begins to breathe fast, like a woman giving birth. He runs from them, crashing away through the forest.

Dee touches Lulu’s hand where it lies on the gritty sand. Loosely grasped in Lulu’s palm is a deep green stone, shot through with veins of white. It is oval and planed smooth by water and time. Pretty pebble. Dee moans. Threads of fresh blood seep from Lulu’s head into the water. They blow up into crimson clouds.

Dee’s legs and arms are slick with lake water, with blood. She bends again and breathes into Lulu’s mouth. A sound comes from Lulu’s chest. It is deep like the creak of a tree branch.