Lisey's Story(133)

Lisey was what her less-than-brilliant father would have called hard flummoxed. She had been so fixated on the problems of getting Manda back from Nowhere Land and coping with Jim Dooley that she had completely forgotten their current state of dishabille, not to mention any possible repercussions of the Great Escape. By now they were nestled in a slant-parkingspace in front of the brick Sheriff's Department building, with a visiting State Police cruiser to their left and a Ford sedan with CASTLE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT. painted on the side to their right, and Lisey began to feel decidedly claustrophobic. The title of a country song - "What Was I Thinking?" - popped into her mind.

Ridiculous, of course - she wasn't a fugitive, Greenlawn wasn't a prison, and Amanda wasn't exactly a prisoner, but her bare feet...how was she going to explain her smucking bare feet? And -  I haven't been thinking at all, not really, I've just been following the steps. The recipe. And this is like turning a page in the cookbook and finding the next one blank.

"Also," Amanda was continuing, "there's Darla and Canty to think about. You did fine this morning, Lisey, I'm not criticizing, but - "

"Yes you are," Lisey said. "And you're right to criticize. If

this isn't a mess already, it soon will be. I didn't want to go to your house too soon or stay there too long in case Dooley's keeping an eye on that, too - "

"Does he know about me?"

I got an idear you got some kind of sister-twister goin on as well, isn't that so?

"I think..." Lisey began, then stopped. That kind of equivocation wouldn't do. "I know he does, Manda."

"Still, he's not Karnak the Great. He can't be both places at the same time."

"No, but I don't want the cops coming by, either. I don't want them in this at all."

"Drive us up to the View, Lisey. You know, Pretty View."

Pretty View was what locals called the picnic area overlooking Castle Lake and Little Kin Pond. It was the entrance to Castle Rock State Park, and there was plenty of parking, even a couple of Portosans. And at mid-afternoon, with thunderstorms rolling in, it would very likely be deserted. A good place to stop, think, take stock, and kill some time. Maybe Amanda really was a genius.

"Come on, get us off Main Street," Amanda said, plucking at the neckline of her pajama top. "I feel like a stripper in church."

Lisey backed carefully out onto the street - now that she wanted nothing to do with the County Sheriff's Department, she was absurdly sure she was going to get into a fender-bender before she could put it behind her - and turned west. Ten minutes later she was turning in at the sign reading.

THIS PARK CLOSES AT SUNDOWN BARREL-PICKING PROHIBITED FOR YOUR HEALTH

BY LAW

5

Lisey's was the only car in the parking lot, and the picnic area was deserted - not even a single backpacker getting high on nature (or Montpelier Gold). Amanda walked toward one of the picnic tables. The soles of her feet were very pink, and even with the sun hidden, she was clearly nude under the green pajamas.

"Amanda, do you really think that's - "

"If someone comes I'll nip right back into the car." Manda looked back over her shoulder and flashed a grin. "Try it - the grass feels positively slinky. "

Lisey walked to the edge of the pavement on the balls of her feet, then stepped up into the green. Amanda was right, slinky was the one, the perfect fish from Scott's pool of words. And the view to the west was a straight shot to the eye and heart. Thunderheads were pouring toward them through the ragged teeth of the White Mountains, and Lisey counted seven dark spots where the high slopes had been smudged away by cauls of rain. Brilliant lightnings flashed inside those stormbags and between two of them, connecting them like some fantastic fairy bridge, was a double rainbow that arched over Mount Cranmore in a frayed loophole of blue. As Lisey watched that hole closed and another, over some mountain whose name she did not know, opened, and the rainbow reappeared. Below them Castle Lake was a dirty dark gray and Little Kin Pond beyond it a dead black goose-eye. The wind was rising but it was improbably warm, and when her hair lifted from her temples, Lisey lifted her arms as though she would fly - not on a magic carpet but on the ordinary alchemy of a summer storm.

"Manda!" she said. "I'm glad I'm alive!"

"So am I," Amanda said seriously, and held out her hands. The wind blew back her graying hair and made it fly like a child's. Lisey closed her fingers carefully around her sister's, trying to be mindful of Amanda's cuts but aware of a rising wildness in herself all the same. Thunder cracked overhead, the warm wind blew harder, and ninety miles to the west, thunderheads streamed through the ancient mountain passes. Amanda began to dance and Lisey danced with her, their bare feet in the grass, their linked hands in the sky.

"Yes!" Thunder cracked and Lisey had to yell it.

"Yes, what? " Manda hollered back. She was laughing again.

"Yes, I mean to kill him!"

"That's what I said! I'll help you!" Amanda shouted, and then the rain began and they ran back to the car, both of them laughing and holding their hands over their heads. 6

They were under cover before the first of that afternoon's half a dozen real downpours came, and so were spared a serious soaking, which they most certainly would have gotten had they dallied; thirty seconds after the first drops fell, they could no longer see the nearest picnic table, less than twenty yards away. The rain was cold, the inside of the car warm, and the windshield fogged up at once. Lisey started the engine and turned on the defroster. Amanda snared Lisey's cell phone. "Time to call Miss Buggy Bumpers," she said, using a childhood name for Darla Lisey hadn't heard in years. Lisey glanced at her watch and saw it was now after three. Not much chance of Canty and Darla (once known as Miss Buggy Bumpers, and how she'd hated it) still being at lunch. "They're probably on the road between Portland and Auburn by now," she said.