have to root them out,” Laurel informed Thalia, then walked purposefully past her to work the locks on the front door.
Thalia punched in the key code before the alarm went off, and watched Laurel walk out onto the front porch. That night Laurel had seen Thalia be everything from their mother to their monstrous uncle Poot to a murdered snail, so it was easy afterward to reconstruct what Thalia did next.
Instead of helping her sister back upstairs to her safe bed or calling David, Thalia slipped on her shoes and followed Laurel out into the night. Followed her exactly, placing her feet carefully in Laurel’s footsteps. She left one hand at her side, the fingers curling under, while the other held out an invisible pocketknife. She dogtrotted around to the front for a moment to observe and re-create the expression in Laurel’s open eyes, as if Laurel were a subject, not a sister. Thalia learned sleepwalking until she owned it, until she learned and owned Laurel in her most vulnerable state.
The air was so thick with storm that the smell came into Laurel’s dream, hot and electric. Victorianna was dense woods all around her. Thalia was slinking along behind her again like a predator. Laurel felt meaty breath on her neck. She sped up, winding her way deeper into her vine-lashed neighborhood.
They had passed the communal playground and the duck pond when a fat drop of rain came slicing down through the summer air and popped off Laurel’s shoulder. Then water fell out of the sky in one solid sheet after another.
Laurel woke up drenched, her left heel bleeding where she’d stepped on something unfriendly. Her nightgown had gone transparent. She screamed and dropped David’s knife, jumped back from its clatter and screamed again. The storm and darkness stripped the houses of their colors, and they crowded the sky around her, the turrets looming high.
Thalia said, “Laurel, it’s me.”
Laurel’s head jerked back and forth as her eyes tried to focus. She put her arms out to catch herself, as if she were falling. Thalia tried to gather Laurel up, but she was lean as a greyhound, not built for comfort; her attempted pat felt like a slap on the slick wet skin of Laurel’s back. Laurel pushed at her, her eyes rolling as she tried to find a landmark. She saw the lights of the clubhouse as Thalia came at her again, her long arms spreading to try to take her in. Laurel turned and limp-sprinted away from her, down the road home, her arms wrapped tight around her front to keep her breasts from bouncing.
She felt the invisible eyes of a hundred imaginary neighbors on her. Was Darla St. John peering out from her darkened bedroom windows, calling Mark over to see that Laurel Hawthorne had snapped like a June pea? Was Edie’s teenage son peeking through the blinds, watching his mother’s friend hobbling through the streets in a nightgown that the rain had rendered as sheer as wet tissue? She could have cried at the injustice of it. This was Thalia’s fault! But Thalia was fully dressed in jeans, tank top, and shoes, running after a hollering, struggling, nearly naked Laurel. Thalia, who didn’t give a crap what any human on God’s green earth thought of her, looked like a Good Samaritan, arms outstretched, trying to rescue her shivering mess of a sister. Laurel, who had to face her neighbors at church and the PTA for decades yet to come, was a train wreck, calling all eyes.
Thalia yelled her name again, and Laurel stopped long enough to shush her sister. She waited, letting Thalia catch up, so at least it would no longer look like Thalia was trying to chase her down and stop her from streaking madly up Beeton Street. They walked back to the house together, quickly, in silence, both of them soaked to the skin. Once inside, Thalia stopped in the foyer, but Laurel kept walking.
“You be gone when I get up,” Laurel said without looking back, and she stalked upstairs.
David sat up as she came in, turning on his bedside lamp and blinking in the light. He stared at Laurel for a long minute, his gears grinding.
“I forgot the chain,” she said. “I took a walk.”
“I thought I set the house alarm,” he said.
Laurel turned her back and started rummaging through her dresser for fresh pajamas. She didn’t want to tattle. David didn’t notice her sister’s good visits, but he kept a running tally