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On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—
“What are you doing here, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.” And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was going to live: “Obviously, Doctor,” she said, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”
lost in the piety of a fifteen-year-old.
And to show his desperation and the validity of his love, he climbed onto the roof of his relatives’ house and jumped off.
A few of us had fallen in love with her, but had kept it to ourselves, knowing that she was the weird sister.
The window from which Cecilia jumped was still open.
“Basically, what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she’d fly.”
“She was always quiet with company,”
Already the
house showed signs of uncleanliness, though they were nothing compared to what was to come later.
At that point something flashed in the corner of his eye. “I thought I saw somebody, but when I looked, there was nothing there.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, quietly. “They took the fence out.”
Mary, Bonnie, Lux and Therese came to school as though nothing had happened.
four hundred and eighteen girls and women he had made love to during his long career.
On that day he would always remember, however, a September afternoon when the leaves had just begun turning,
caused his pulse to rise and a light sweat to break out on the back of his neck just then.
“Every second is eternal,”
“She was the still point of the turning world,”
They didn’t exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen.
It was the first assembly he had attended in three years, because skipping assembly was easier than skipping any other period,
Trip Fontaine became the first boy after Peter Sissen to enter the Lisbon house alone.
“You would have killed yourself just to have something to do.”
The Lisbon porch, where we’d first stood to see Cecilia on the fence, had become like a sidewalk crack: stepping on it was bad luck.
Had they withdrawn from their peers?
“She was always saying, ‘Fuck this school,’ or ‘I can’t wait until I get out of here.’
do but dont agree as well
“It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever.”
that all the healing was done by those of us without wounds.
Mr. Lisbon possessed only a vague memory of the Day of Grieving. “Try decade,” he told us.
Day by day, the girls appeared to be getting over their loss.
An air of expectancy glows in the girls’ faces. Gripping one another, pulling each other into the frame, they seem braced for some discovery or change of life.
“They cut her eyes in half.”
left their dates while they took the first of seven trips to the bathroom.
Lux looking in the mirror for the instant it took to reconfirm her beauty, Therese avoiding it altogether.
It was then Trip Fontaine finally got to dance with her, and years later he told us the baggy dress had only increased his desire.
We walked past them whenever we could, going to the bathroom twenty times and drinking twenty glasses of cider.
bitch had locked them up again. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just did.”
Moreover, as fall turned to winter, the trees in the yard drooped and thickened, concealing the house, even though their leaflessness should have revealed it.
“That doctor wanted to blame it on us. He thought Ronnie and I were to blame.”
it was you, and the husbamd lettung u be that cinfroling
Lux never spoke to Trip Fontaine again, nor did Joe Hill Conley call Bonnie, as he had promised.
Best thing I ever did was to throw down the old shovel and hoe and get out of that town.”
even our own parents began to mention how dim and unhealthy the place looked.
which only grew worse through the course of the remaining deaths.
spines. Sound returned only once Lux had gone.
“Your daughter’s going to be fine.”
“But even her delight had a manic quality to it. She bounced off the walls.”
(Mrs. Loomis, however, maintained he’d gotten an electric razor after what had happened with Cecilia.)
what rhe fuck.
It is speaking to us. But we can’t hear.
for the first time in seven years suffered no pain.
