Page 55 of They Say a Girl Died Here

“Just a boy in our class.” Caroline sounded innocuous enough, but Anna knew that tone. This was a boy Caroline liked. “He’s pretty cool.”

Cool. Cool invariably didn’t equate to nice. As Caroline wriggled out of her dress and pulled her old T-shirt back on, Anna studied her. Thick, beautiful long hair that was glossy dark, not the dull brown so many girls had. Hair like a Pantene ad. Hair like hers, if she ever took care of it. A bow mouth that formed perfect, plump rosebud lips. Flawless skin. Wide green eyes. Caroline was morphing into stunning. Maybe she was already there. Anna felt sick.

“I thought you were afraid of this Farmhand thing.” The straw bracelet was still on her sister’s wrist. “Sleeping outside alone?”

“I’m okay about that now. It’s only a silly, spooky story. There aren’t any monsters.” She looked around, smiling. Oh yes, there are, Callie. But I hope you never meet one.

“Yeah. Like today,” Callie continued, “because it’s Lila’s anniversary, everyone at school was talking about me saying Farmhand into the mirror.” She smiled with more than a little pride. “Ben said I was pretty wild for having done it when no one else did. So you think this dress is good?” She held it up against herself again. “Maybe I should wear that miniskirt and crop top. Oh man, it’s so hard to decide.”

Wild. Ben had called Callie wild. Anna didn’t like that at all.

“Either will look great.” She tilted her head. “Why don’t you let me put some layers in your hair? I haven’t cut it for ages. Will make it easier to style. Would be cool.”

“You remember how to do it?” Callie looked doubtful, one hand running through her silken mane. Anna could see she was tempted. With it so long it was easy for Grandma to insist she wore it like some choir girl, with a neat bow and running long down her back. Callie didn’t want that anymore. Callie had liked being called wild.

“I worked Saturdays in that salon for two whole years, Callie. Of course I can remember. Still got the special scissors and comb.” She stood. “Come on.” She headed to her room, not giving Caroline time to change her mind.

“Just sit over there,” she said. “No, face the window, not the mirror,” she continued, her voice airy, a voice belonging to someone else, not her. “I want it to be a surprise.”

“Okay.” Caroline did as she was told and gave Anna her biggest, happiest smile. It was so open and warm. She was beautiful. She radiated it. It’s for the best, Anna thought as she opened the box. Her fingers felt numb, but she moved them anyway, sliding them into the cool of the metal scissor hoops. It’ll be for the best.

65

Caroline cried pretty much all night, pausing only to scream, blotchy-faced, at Anna, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, before storming to bed and leaving Anna to take Mom’s disappointed, devastating anger. How could you? What is wrong with you? Why do you have to wreck everything? Anna was numb but calm, the house a whirlwind around her.

Grandma had been no help. After putting her toothbrush in the fridge, she got confused trying to find the bathroom and wouldn’t even let Anna help her to bed, instead closing her door, talking to herself about gardening.

Anna went to her room and stayed there, curled up on her side, her head and heart both a mess. Later, Mom came and stood in the doorway, talking about psychiatrists and residential places, and Anna had put her earbuds in without even looking up, drowning her out with old Nine Inch Nails tracks. Mom gave up soon enough. Anna was pretty sure Mom was close to giving up on her completely.

By the next day, it was the quiet after the storm. Caroline wasn’t talking to her, which didn’t come as any surprise. In the full light of morning, what Anna had done to Caroline’s beautiful hair was stark in its ugliness. Big chunks were hacked out from the back and sides, other sections cut close to her skull. Mom didn’t speak to Anna as she fussed around her golden child, getting them ready to leave and promising they would fix her hair at an expensive salon in the city. Anna watched the car drive away down past the cemetery. No school for Caroline this morning. Hopefully no party this weekend for Caroline either. Just trying to protect you, Callie. Empty words against Caroline’s tears, and Anna felt sick at what she’d done even though she knew she’d do it again if she had to.

As she lit up on the porch, the pack she’d found in the diner now down to ten smokes, she spotted a car out at the cemetery. It was too far for her to see who it was, but she knew it would be Bonnie’s parents, standing by their daughter’s grave and wondering what they could have done differently to have changed what happened to her that night. It was Thursday. It was no longer Lila’s anniversary, but Bonnie’s.

Staring out through the gray muggy heat—Jesus, it had to rain soon—Anna once again second-guessed her own mad mind. Did she really believe the girls had been murdered here? That ghosts were talking through Grandma? Compared with the stark reality of Caroline’s tears and the scissor cuts she hadn’t been able to stop herself from making, all of that was ephemeral. She and Grandma quietly losing their minds together. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe she did need to check into the psych unit for a while.

When her coffee and cigarette had woken her up, or at least gotten rid of her heavy bleariness, she went back inside, seeking out slightly cooler air. The first thing she noticed was that there was no loud TV on anymore, and the second was that the basement door was open.

“Grandma?” The stairs were uneven and her heart was in her mouth, her head filled with an image of Grandma splayed dead at the bottom, but instead, as she stepped into the dirty yellow gloom, coming down the first few steps, she saw Grandma sitting on a chair by a pile of boxes at the back.

“Anna.” It was a statement of fact as she looked over, but her eyes had that almost-empty glaze to them.

“Come back upstairs. You’re missing your shows.” Anna had been hoping for a quiet morning until Mom and Caroline got back and she could escape to the diner. Maybe even some more sleep. Grandma clearly had other plans.

“Lucas put a lock on the door,” she muttered. “On the inside. It’s not there now. Things keep being different.”

Anna sat on a packing crate and gently wiped the cobwebs from the cuff of Grandma’s blouse. What had she been rooting around in? She took her hand. The crazies of the family together. “I don’t remember Lucas doing that. You shouldn’t come down here, Grandma. Those stairs aren’t safe.”

“I have to help.” Grandma straightened up. “I have to help you.”

“Okay. Well, thank you, I guess.” She glanced around. The dusty floor was still clean. No blood splatter. She looked at Grandma. Maybe Anna had more chance of an honest answer when she was like this. “Did you clean up the stains, Grandma?”

“No.” Grandma shook her head. Her hand tightened in Anna’s and Anna looked up to see Grandma staring right at her. Intent. “But sometimes I see it too. Never in the same place.”

Anna frowned. “What do you see, Grandma?”

“The blood.”

Anna sat up straighter. “Please try to make sense, Grandma. I want to understand.”