Indledning
I’ve just killed Carol Ann. Sweet, innocent Carol Ann. Her blond hair flows down her back and trails in the spreading pool of blood. What have I done?

I’ve known Carol Ann for nearly my whole life. Every memory from my childhood is permeated by the blonde angel who moved in across the street when I was five or so.

Skipping up the street after the ice cream truck, getting lost in the shadows during a game of hide-and-seek, watching her sit in the window of her pink room, brushing that glorious hair.

We were two peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin. Best friends forever. Forever just turned out to be an awful long time.

Our relationship started as benignly as you’d expect. I’d seen the moving truck leave and knew that a family had taken the Estes’ house.

Mrs. Estes died, left her son with bills and a dozen cats. I missed the cats. I’d wondered about the family, then went back to my own world.

Optimer dit sprog - Læs vores guide og scor topkarakter

Uddrag
“Mama’s girl, mama’s girl.” She singsonged and danced and I followed, my chin set, incensed. Before I knew it, we were on the river, a whole block away from Mama’s house.

I wasn’t allowed to go to the river. A boy drowned the summer past, no one I really knew, but all the grown-ups decided it wasn’t safe for us to play down there.

This girl was new, she wouldn’t know any better. I didn’t want to be a mama’s girl anymore. Mama skinned my hide that night. She’d called and called for me to come to dinner, had Tappy look for me.

Carol Ann and I were too busy to hear. We skipped rocks, whistled through pieces of grass turned sideways between our thumbs, and dug for worms.

I showed her how to bait a line and she nearly fainted dead away when I put a warm, wriggling worm in her hand. Tappy found us right after sunset and took me home screaming over his shoulder.

The joy I felt wouldn’t be suffused by Mama’s switch. Never again. I had a friend, and her name was Carol Ann. It was the first of many concessions to her whims.

“My Goodness, Lily, can’t you try to look happy? You’re all sweet and clean, and we’ll have some ice cream after, if you’re good. All right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, sullen.

Mama had me spit-shined and polished for a funeral service at church. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to run off to the river with Carol Ann, skip rocks, have a spitting contest, something.

Anything but go to church, sit in those hard pews, and listen to Preacher yell at the old folks who couldn’t sing loud enough because their voices were caked with age and rot.

I didn’t think that was fair to them. I remember my granny vaguely, who smelled like our attic and had a long hair poking out of her chin. She’d scoop me in her arms and sing to me, her voice soft like the other old folks.

I liked that, liked to hear them whisper the words. It made the hymns seem dangerous in a way. Like the old folks knew the dead would reach out of their very graves and grab their hands, pull them down into the earth with them if they sang loud enough to wake them.

Mama wasn’t hearing no for an answer today. We walked the quarter mile to the Southern Baptist, greeted our brothers and sisters, sat in the hard pews, and celebrated the death of Mrs. O’Leary.

Preacher made sure we knew that we were sinners, and I felt that vague guilt that I was alive and Mrs. O’Leary was dead, though it was supposed to be glorious to have passed to the better side.

We finished up and put Mrs. O’Leary in the ground. I tried hard to hold my breath in the graveyard so no spirits could inhabit me

but the graveside service took so long I had to breathe. I took small sips of air through my nose, felt my vision blacken. Mama pinched my upper arm so hard I gasped.

I gave up trying to hold my breath. All the ghosts had been waiting, watching, patiently hovering, anticipating the moment when I took in a full breath of air.

They’re inside me now; they inhabited my soul, tumultuous and gray. I tried to fight them, until I couldn’t find any more reason to.

I begged to be allowed to go home, to be with Carol Ann, but Mama kept a firm grip on my arm while I cried. Folks thought I was grieving for Mrs. O’Leary. I was grieving for myself.