“You know how children are. Sometimes one of them gets something, something neither good nor bad nor worth wanting, and they build it into something shining and wonderful so all other children are jealous. Children have the most inexplicable methods of obtaining their ends. They promote jealousy with the most peculiar weapons, even Death. Clarisse doesn’t really want—want to be sick. She just—well—she just thinks she does. She doesn’t really know what Death is. She hasn’t been touched by it. Our family has been lucky. Her grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts are all alive. There hasn’t been a death among us in twenty years at least.”
Mrs. Partridge drew into herself, and turned over Aggie Lou’s life as if it were a doll to be examined. “We’ve fed Aggie Lou on pretty dreams, too. She’s so young, and now with the illness, well, we thought we would make it easier for her if anything should happen.
“Yes, but don’t you see that it’s causing complications.”
“It’s making my daughter’s life bearable. I don’t know how she’d go on otherwise,” said Mrs. Partridge.
Mrs. Shepherd said, “Well, I’m going to tell my daughter tonight that it’s all nonsense, that she’s not to believe one more word of it.”
“But how thoughtless,” came back Mrs. Partridge. “She would only rush over and tell Aggie Lou, and Aggie Lou would—well—it just wouldn’t be right. You see?”
“But Clarisse is unhappy.”
“She has her health, at least. She can bear being unhappy awhile. Poor Aggie Lou, she deserves what little joy she can find.”
Mrs. Partridge had a good point and stuck to it. Mrs. Shepherd had to agree that it might be wise to let it go a while longer, “Except that Clarisse is so disturbed.”
IN THE next few days from her window Aggie Lou saw Clarisse all dressed up and going down the street and when she called to ask over the distance where Clarisse was going, Clarisse pivoted and with a shining white look, which was alien to her face, replied that she was going to church to pray for Aggie Lou to get well.
“Clarisse, you come back here, come back!” shouted Aggie Lou.
“Why, Aggie Lou,” said her parents to her, “how can you be so cross towards Clarisse, she’s so considerate, bothering to go all the way to church that way.”
Aggie Lou thumped over in bed, muttering into the pillow.
And when the new doctor appeared, Aggie Lou stared at him and his silver hypodermic and said, “Where’d he come from?”
The doctor, it turned out, was a cousin of Mr. Partridge’s who had experimented with some new injections which he promptly gave to Aggie Lou with a smile and only a little prickling pain to her arm.
“I suppose Clarisse had something to do with this?” asked Aggie Lou.
“Yes, she kept talking to her father and her father finally telegraphed the doctor.”
Aggie Lou rubbed her injection mark fiercely and said, “I knew it, I
At night, in the cool darkness, Aggie kneeled upon her bed and looked at the ceiling. “God, if you’re listening to Clarisse, don’t any more. She spoils everything. After all, it’s up to me, isn’t it, to ask for what happens to me? Yes. Then, don’t pay no attention to Clarisse, she’s mean. Thank you, God.”
Late that night she tried her very hardest to die. She gritted her teeth and sweat rolled down and tasted of salt in her mouth. She clenched her fists and held them taut at her sides and stretched her body like a steel spring. Inside, she tried to catch the beat of her heart, using her ribs and lungs as hands to clutch it with and stop it, as you stop a clock in the night when its ticking keeps you awake.
Finally, too warm, she threw back the covers and lay moist and panting. Much later she went and stood by the window and looked over at the other house where the lights burned until dawn. She practiced lying on the floor and dying. And she practiced sitting in a chair and dying. She tried it in many postures, but nothing happened, her heart ticked merrily on.
At other times Clarisse would come stand under her window. “I’m going to jump in the river,” she said, tauntingly. Or, “I’m going to eat until I bust.”
“Shut up!” Aggie Lou would reply.
Clarisse would bounce her red ball and pass her little curve of leg over over over it, one two three four, over over. And while doing it she would sing, “Gonna jump in the river, gonna leap off a hotel, gonna eat till I bah-ust, gonna jump in the rih-ver.” Bounce, bounce, bounce rubber.
Slam, would go Aggie Lou’s windows!
Aggie Lou scowled in bed. Supposing Clarisse did what she said? It would be spoiled. There would be no use dying then. Aggie Lou hated to be second comer for anything. She always wanted something her very own. Clarisse had just better not try anything!
Then, the insidious thing began to take place. Aggie Lou started feeling better. The yellow sun looked bright, hot. The birds sang sweetly. She smelled the air like spring wine. But she was afraid to tell mother because mother would tell Clarisse and Clarisse would go ha ha oh ha ha, haha oh haha and yahhh for you! Aggie Lou realized, like a flash bulb going off, that she was getting well! Did the doctor know? Did mother guess? They mustn’t. Not yet. No, not yet.
And she began to feel like running in the sun, over the lawns, she felt like hop scotching and climbing leafy trees, and lots of things. But she didn’t dare say this. No, she pretended she was still sick and going to die. A weird thought came to her suddenly that she didn’t really care about that silver house on the hill, or the dolls, or the dress, it was just so good not to feel tired.
But there was Clarisse to be faced, and what if she got well now and Clarisse teased her? My, she couldn’t bear to think of it!
So next time Clarisse ran by like a pink robot on the grass, Aggie Lou yoohooed. “I’m going to die Thursday at three-fifteen. The doctor said so. He showed me a picture of my nice casket!”
And a few minutes later Clarisse rushed out of her house, her coat and bonnet on, heading down toward church to see what she could do to circumvent this!
And as she returned at twilight, Aggie Lou leaned out and said in a faint and poignant whisper: “I’m feeling worse!”
Clarisse stamped her foot.
THE NEXT morning a fly landed on the quilt. The fly walked around until Aggie Lou hit it. Then it lay quivering and then was silent. It didn’t make a noise. It didn’t buzz or twitch.
When father came up bearing breakfast on a tray she pointed at the fly and asked a question.
Her father nodded. “Yes, it’s dead.” He gave it no importance, he seemed preoccupied with something else. It was, after all, just a fly.
After breakfast, alone, she touched the fly and it did not protest.
“You’re dead,” she said. “You’re dead.”
An hour of watching and waiting revealed something to her. “Why, he doesn’t do anything. Just sits there.”
“How silly,” she said, forty minutes later. “That’s no fun.”
And she looked over at Clarisse’s house and then lay back, closing her eyes, and, presently, she began to smile, contentedly.
HOW IT came about three days later that Clarisse had her accident, no one knew. It happened for sure. After three days of Aggie Lou poking out the window, advising Clarisse as to her coming death, Clarisse ran to play softball in the street Wednesday afternoon with some other girls who played way out in the distances behind the boy fielders.
They were chasing long flies when the accident happened.
Homer Philipps smacked out a walloping three bagger and Clarisse ran to catch it and a car turned a sharp corner, and Clarisse was running along silently, when the car made her stop by hitting her.
Now, whether the car or Clarisse was to blame is one of those things you can talk about forever but never settle. Some say Clarisse didn’t look around—others say she did, but something compelled her to keep running.
The car lifted her like a leaf and tossed her. She tumbled and broke.
