'What?' Amanda asked in that special tone that really demands What now?
'Nothing. Well…I was just remembering something Daddy told me after I got my license. I drove a bunch of kids back from White's Beach one day, and…you remember White's, don't you?' They were in the car now, and Lisey was backing out of the shady space. So far this part of the world was still quiet, and that was the way she wanted to leave it.
Amanda snorted and buckled her seatbelt, doing it carefully because of her wounded hands. 'White's! Huh! Nothing but an old gravel pit that happened to have a coldspring in the bottom!' Her look of scorn melted into an expression of longing. 'Nothing at all like the sand at Southwind.'
'Is that what you called it?' Lisey asked, curious in spite of herself. She stopped at the mouth of the parking lot and waited for a break in traffic so she could make a left onto Minot Avenue and start the journey back to Castle Rock. Traffic was heavy and she had to fight the impulse to make a right instead, just so she could get them away from here.
'Of course,' Amanda said, sounding rather put-out with Lisey. 'Southwind is where the Hollyhocks always came to pick up supplies. It's also where the pirate-girls got to see their boyfriends. Don't you remember?'
'Sort of,' Lisey said, wondering if she would hear an alarm go off behind her when they discovered Amanda was gone. Probably not. Mustn't scare the patients. She saw a small break in traffic and scooted the BMW into it, earning herself a honk from some impatient driver who actually had to slow down five miles an hour to let her in.
Amanda flipped this motorist—almost certainly a man, probably wearing a baseball cap and needing a shave—a double bird, raising her fists to shoulder height and pumping the middle fingers briskly without looking around.
'Great technique,' Lisey said. 'Someday it'll get you raped and murdered.'
Amanda rolled a sly eye in her sister's direction. 'Big talk for someone in the soup.' Then, with hardly a pause for breath: 'What did Dandy tell you when you came back from White's that day? I bet it was foolish, whatever it was.'
'He saw me get out of that old Pontiac with no sneakers or sandals on and said it was against the law to drive barefoot in the state of Maine.' Lisey glanced briefly, guiltily, down at her toes on the accelerator as she finished saying this.
Amanda made a small, rusty sound. Lisey thought she might be crying, or trying to. Then she realized Amanda was giggling. Lisey began to smile herself, partly because just ahead she saw the Route 202 bypass that would take her around the worst of the city traffic.
'What a fool he was!' Amanda said, getting the words out around further bursts of giggles. 'What a sweet old fool! Dandy Dave Debusher! Sugar for brains! Do you know what he once told me?'
'No, what?'
'Spit, if you want to know.'
Lisey pushed the button that lowered her window, spat, and wiped her still slightly swollen lower lip with the heel of her hand. 'What, Manda?'
'Said if I kissed a boy with my mouth open, I'd get pregnant.'
'Bullshit, he never!'
'It's true, and I'll tell you something else.'
'What?'
'I'm pretty sure he believed it!'
Then they were both laughing.
XIII. Lisey and Amanda
(The Sister Thing)
1
Now that she had Amanda, Lisey wasn't exactly sure what to do with her. Right up to Greenlawn, all the steps had seemed clear, but as they drove toward Castle Rock and the
thunderheads massing over New Hampshire, nothing seemed clear. She had just kidnapped her supposedly catatonic sister from one of central Maine's finer nuthouses, for God's sweet sake.
Amanda, however, seemed far from nuts; any fears Lisey harbored of her slipping back into catatonia dissipated in a hurry. Amanda Debusher hadn't been this sharp in years. After listening to everything that had passed between Lisey and Jim 'Zack' Dooley, she said: 'So. Scott's manuscripts may have been the main thing when he turned up, but now he's after you, because he's your basic loony who gets hard hurting women. Like that weirdo Rader, out in Wichita.'
Lisey nodded. He hadn't raped her, but he'd gotten hard, all right. What amazed her was Amanda's succinct re-statement of her situation, even down to the Rader comparison…whose name Lisey wouldn't have remembered. Manda had the advantage of a little distance, of course, yet her clarity of mind was still startling.
Up ahead was a sign reading CASTLE ROCK 15. As they passed it, the sun sailed behind the building clouds. When Amanda next spoke her voice was quieter. 'You mean to do it to him before he can do it to you, don't you? Kill him and get rid of the body in that other world.' Up ahead of them, thunder rumbled. Lisey waited. Are we doing the sister thing? she thought. Is that what this is?
'Why, Lisey? Other than that I guess you can?'
'He hurt me. He fucked with me.' She didn't think she sounded like herself at all, but if truth was the sister thing—she thought it was—then this was it, sure. 'And let me tell you, honey: the next time he fucks with me is going to be the last time he fucks with anybody.'
Amanda sat looking straight ahead at the unrolling road with her arms folded under her scant bosom. At last she said, almost to herself, 'You always were the steel in his spine.'
Lisey looked at her, more than surprised. She was shocked. 'Say what?'
'Scott. And he knew it.' She lifted one of her arms and looked at the red scar there. Then she looked at Lisey. 'Kill him,' she said with chilling indifference. 'I have no problem with that.'
2
Lisey swallowed and heard a click in her throat. 'Look, Manda, I really don't have any clear idea what I'm doing. You have to know that up front. I'm pretty much flying blind here.' 'Oh, you know what, I don't believe that,' Amanda said, almost playfully. 'You left messages saying that you'd see him at eight o'clock in Scott's study—one on your answering machine, and one with that Pittsburgh professor, in case Dooley called there. You mean to kill him and that's fine. Hey, you gave the cops their shot, didn't you?' And before Lisey could reply: 'Sure you did. And the guy waltzed right past them. Almost cut your tit off with your own can opener.'
Lisey came around a curve and found herself behind another waddling pulp-truck; it was like the day she and Darla had come back from admitting Amanda all over again. Lisey squeezed the brake, once more feeling guilty that she was driving barefoot. Old ideas died hard.
