First Thrills - Lee Child [126]
I went back to school that year. Mama had been keeping me home before, teaching me herself, but she figured it was time for me to leave the nest. I needed to be around more girls and boys my age. I was so happy that she sent me to school at last, because Carol Ann was there. She had moved, but only a couple of streets over. She was zoned to the junior high, just like I was.
We didn’t exactly pick up where we left off. Carol Ann had many other friends now. But I’d catch her watching me as I stood on the periphery of her group of devotees, and she’d wink at me in welcome. Those moments warmed my heart and soul. She was still my Carol Ann, even though I shared her with my classmates.
The school year progressed without incident until Carol Ann came up with a new game. The pass-out game. Every girl in school wanted to be a part of it. We’d line up in the bathrooms, stand with our backs against the wall, and hold our breath until the world got spinny. Carol Ann would cover our hearts with her hands and push. Hard. We’d pass out cold, some sliding down the walls, some keeling over. Carol Ann reasoned that it stopped our hearts for a moment, that in that brief time we could see God. That’s why the teachers got so upset when they found out.
Of course, they found out when I was doing the heart-pushing on a seventh-grader named Jo. I got suspended, and the fun stopped. No more pass- out game. No more Carol Ann, at least until I wasn’t grounded anymore.
They rezoned us for the ninth grade; decided we were big enough to go to high school. I had to take the bus, which I normally hated, because it drove past the Johnsons’ farm, and their copse of pine trees with the hanging man in them. I knew it wasn’t a real dead man, but the branches in one of the trees had died, and they drooped brown against the evergreen—arms, legs, torso, and broken neck. Mama used to drive me to Doctor Halloway this route, ignoring my requests to go the long way past Tappy’s place. I hated this road as a young girl; just knew the hanging man would get out of that tree and follow me home.
When the bus would pass it by, I’d try not to look. Since I was a little older now, it wasn’t so bad in the daylight. But as winter came along and the days shortened, the hanging man waited for me in the dusky gloom. He spoke to me, the deadness of the pine needles brown and dusty like a grave.
The next year, Carol Ann started taking the bus. Life got better. She was only on it some days, because she had a lot of dates now. Some days, after school, I’d watch Carol Ann riding off in cars with shiny, clean boys, throwing a grin over her shoulder as they faded into the gloaming. But there were times when she’d come out of the school, clothes rumpled, mouth red and raw, scabs forming on her knees. She’d jump on the bus just before it pulled away from the curb and wouldn’t want to talk.
But mostly, we sat together in the back, in those idyllic days, talking about boys and teachers, the upcoming dances and who was doing it. I knew Carol Ann was. You could tell that about her. I was fascinated by sex, though I’d never experienced it. Carol Ann promised to tell me all about it.
She snuck vodka from her parents’ house and slipped it into her milk some mornings. She’d share the treat with me, and we’d get boneless in the back of the bus, giggling our fool heads off. She taught me how to make a homemade scar tattoo, using the initials of a boy I liked. She took the eraser end of a pencil and ran it up and down her arm a million times until a shiny raw burn in the shape of a J appeared. She handed the pencil to me, and I tore at my skin until a misaligned M welled blood. I have that M to this day. I don’t remember which boy it was for.
The bus driver, Mrs. Bean, caught us with the vodka-laced milk. Carol Ann wasn’t allowed to ride the bus anymore. I didn’t see her as much after that. I think the school and Mama really did their best to keep us apart. It was probably a wise decision. But I felt incomplete