First Thrills - Lee Child [125]
“There’s no one to be sisters with, Carol Ann. You know that.” I felt vaguely superior for a moment, but she ended that.
“We need a knife.”
“Why?”
“My Lord in heaven, Lily, how do you think we’re going to get at the blood?”
So I snuck out of my room, slunk down the stairs, gripping each with my toes so the wind didn’t whisk me away when it tore the roof off the house. The storm was loud enough that Mama didn’t hear me go into the kitchen, get a knife from the rack next to the stove, and make my way back up the stairs into my room. Carol Ann’s eyes lit up when she saw the knife, the five- inch blade sharpened to a razor’s edge.
“Give that to me.”
I did, a sense of wrongness making my hand tremble. I think I knew deep in my heart that Mama wouldn’t want me becoming blood sisters with anyone, no matter what the course of action that led me there. But that was Carol Ann for you. She could always convince me to see things her way.
Carol Ann took one of my sheer cotton sweaters, a red one, and laid it over the lamp, so the light fragmented like a lung’s pink froth and the room became like thin blood. We sat in the middle of the floor, Indian-style, facing each other. She made sure our legs were touching. I was scared.
“Okay. Stop fretting. This will only hurt for a second, then it will be all over. You still want to be my blood sister, right?”
I swallowed hard. Would this make us one? I didn’t want that. No, I didn’t want that at all. A tiny corner of my mind said, “Go find your Mama, let Carol Ann do this by herself.”
“I think so,” I answered instead.
“You think? Now Lily, what did I say about you thinking? That’s what I’m here for. I do the thinking for both of us, and everything always turns out just fine. Now quit being such a baby and give me your arm. Your right arm.”
I didn’t want Carol Ann to think I was a baby. I held out my arm, which only shook for a second.
Carol Ann was mumbling something, an incantation of sorts. Then she held up the knife and smiled. “With this blade, I christen thee.” She ran the blade along the inside of her right arm, bright red blood blooming in the furrows created in her tender flesh. She smirked, a joyous glow lighting her translucent skin, and took my arm. The point of the knifed dug into the crook of my elbow. “Say it,” she hissed.
“With this blade, I christen thee.” My voice trembled. She drew the knife along my arm and I almost fainted when I saw the blood, dark red, much darker than Carol Ann’s. Then she took my arm and her arm and held them together. We stood, attached, and walked in a circle, eyes locked, blood spilling into each other.
“Our blood mingles, and we become one. You are now as much Carol Ann as I am, and I am as much Lily as you are. We are one, sisters in blood.”
Redness slipped down my elbow. Spots danced merrily in my vision.
Carol Ann’s eye sparkled. “Quick, we need to tie this together, let our blood flow through each other’s veins while our hearts still beat.”
She grabbed a sock off the floor and wound it around our arms, dabbing at the rivulets before they splashed on the floor of my bedroom, then beckoned me to lay down next to her. I put my head in her lap, my arm stretched and tied to hers, and she held me as our blood became one. I felt at peace. The ferocity of the storm seemed to lessen, and I felt calm, sleepy even.
“LILY!” The scream made me jump. It was Mama. She saw what Carol Ann and I had done. I didn’t care. I was tired. It was too much trouble to worry about the beating I was going to get.
I didn’t get to see Carol Ann the rest of that muggy summer. Mama sent me away to a white place that smelled of antiseptic and urine. I hated it.
I came back from the white place in the fall, quieter, more watchful than before. The leaves were red and orange and brown, the skies were crisp and blue. I was worried that Carol Ann might have moved away; the drive was empty across the street, the window dark. When I asked Mama, she told me to quit it already.