Sharp_Objects

Katie pulled a soft pack of cigarettes from the endtable drawer, lit one with a long fireplace match. Still a secret smoker.

“Oh, she and those three girls, those little blonde things with the tits already, they rule the school, and Amma rules them. Seriously, it’s bad. Sometimes funny, but mostly bad. They make this fat girl get them lunch every day, and before she leaves, they make her eat something without using her hands, just dig her face in there on the plate.” She scrunched up her nose but didn’t seem otherwise bothered. “Another little girl they cornered and made her lift up her shirt and show the boys. Because she was flat. They made her say dirty things while she was doing it. There’s a rumor going around that they took one of their old friends, girl named Ronna Deel they’d fallen out with, took her to a party, got her drunk and…kind of gave her as a present to some of the older boys. Stood guard outside the room till they were done with her.”

“They’re barely thirteen,” I said. I thought of what I’d done at that age. For the first time I realized how offensively young it was.

“These are precocious little girls. We did some pretty wild things ourselves at not much older.” Katie’s voice got huskier with her smoke. She blew it up and watched it hover blue above us.

“We never did anything that cruel.”

“We came pretty damn close, Camille.” You did, I didn’t. We stared at each other, privately cataloguing our power plays.

“Anyway, Amma fucked with Ann and Natalie a lot,” Katie said. “It was nice your mom took so much interest in them.”

“My mom tutored Ann, I know.”

“Oh, she’d work with them during mother’s aide, have them over to your house, feed them after school. Sometimes she’d even come by during recess and you could see her outside the fence, watching them on the playground.”

A flash of my mother, fingers wrapped between the fence wire, hungrily looking in. A flash of my mother in white, glowing white, holding Natalie with one arm, and a finger up to her mouth to hush James Capisi.

“Are we done?” Katie asked. “I’m sort of tired of talking about all this.” She clicked the tape recorder off.

“So, I heard about you and the cute cop,” Katie smiled. A wisp of hair came unhooked from her ponytail, and I could remember her, head bent over her feet, painting her toenails and asking about me and one of the basketball players she’d wanted for herself. I tried not to wince at the mention of Richard.

“Oh, rumors, rumors.” I smiled. “Single guy, single girl…my life isn’t nearly that interesting.”

“John Keene might say different.” She plucked another cigarette, lit it, inhaled and exhaled while fixing me with those china blue eyes. No smile this time. I knew this could go two ways. I could give her a few tidbits, make her happy. If the story had already reached Katie at ten, the rest of Wind Gap would hear by noon. Or I could deny, risk her anger, lose her cooperation. I already had the interview, and I certainly didn’t care about staying in her good graces.

“Ah. More rumors. People need to get some better hobbies around here.”

“Really? Sounded pretty typical to me. You were always open to a good time.”

I stood up, more than ready to leave. Katie followed me out, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“Thanks for your time, Katie. It was good seeing you.”

“You too, Camille. Enjoy the rest of your stay here.” I was out the door and on the steps when she called back to me.

“Camille?” I turned around, saw Katie with her left leg bent inward like a little girl’s, a gesture she had even in high school. “Friendly advice: Get home and wash yourself. You stink.”

I did go home. My brain was stumbling from image to image of my mother, all ominous. Omen. The word beat again on my skin. Flash of thin, wild-haired Joya with the long nails, peeling skin from my mother. Flash of my mother and her pills and potions, sawing through my hair. Flash of Marian, now bones in a coffin, a white satin ribbon wrapped around dried blonde curls, like some bouquet gone stale. My mother tending to those violent little girls. Or trying to. Natalie and Ann weren’t likely to suffer much of that. Adora hated little girls who didn’t capitulate to her peculiar strain of mothering. Had she painted Natalie’s fingernails before she strangled her? After?

You’re crazy to think what you’re thinking. You’re crazy to not think it.

Chapter Fifteen

Three little pink bikes were lined up on the porch, bedecked with white wicker baskets, ribbons streaming off the handlebars. I peeked in one of the baskets and saw an oversized stick of lipgloss and a joint in a sandwich bag.

I slipped in a side door and padded up the steps. The girls were in Amma’s room giggling loudly, shrieking with delight. I opened the door without knocking. Rude, but I couldn’t bear the idea of that secret shuffle, that rush to pose innocently for the grown-up. The three blondes were standing in a circle around Amma, short shorts and miniskirts bearing their shaved stick legs. Amma was on the floor fiddling with her dollhouse, a tube of super glue beside her, her hair piled on top of her head and tied with a big blue ribbon. They shrieked again when I said hello, flashing outraged, exhilarated smiles, like startled birds.

“Hey, Mille,” blurted Amma, no longer bandaged, but looking tweaked and feverish. “We’re just playing dolls. Don’t I have the most beautiful dollhouse?” Her voice was syrupy, modeled after a child on a 1950s family show. Hard to reconcile this Amma with the one who gave me drugs just two nights before. My sister who supposedly pimped out her friends to older boys for laughs.

“Yeah, Camille, don’t you love Amma’s dollhouse?” echoed the brassy blonde in a husky voice. Jodes was the only one not looking at me. Instead she was staring into the dollhouse as if she could will herself inside.

“You feel better, Amma?”

“Oh, indeed I do, sister dear,” she whinnied. “I hope you feel well also.”