***

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 may have moved away; the drive was empty across the street, the window dark. When I asked Mama, she told me to quit it already. No more talk of Carol Ann. I wasn’t allowed to see her, to play with her, anymore.

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 out backs against the wall, 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, and 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 any more.

They rezoned us for 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 that 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, 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’s 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 without her at my side.

***

Now that I’m grown, away from Mama’s house, away from Carol Ann, I remember the little things. Spilling on Carol Ann’s bike, scraping the length of my thigh on the gravel. The year she pushed me into the cactus while we were trick-or-treating. The day I nearly drowned when I fell through the ice on Gideon’s Lake, and she laughed watching me panic before she went for help. Carol Ann did nothing but get me in trouble, and I was happy to leave her behind as an adult.

So you can imagine my shock and surprise when the doorbell rang, late one evening, and Carol Ann was on my front step. Somewhere, deep inside me, I knew something was dreadfully wrong.

I live in the A-frame house I grew up in. Mama’s been in a home over in Spring Hill for a couple of years now. They have nice flowerbeds, and I visit her often. We walk amongst the flowers and she reminds me of all the terrible things I did when I was a kid. No one thought I’d ever grow out of my awkward stage, but I did. I went off to college and everything. Carol Ann went to a neighboring school. I’d see her every once in a while, working as a waitress in one of the coffee shops on campus, or shopping in the bookstore. I learned that it was best to ignore her. If I ignored her enough, she’d get the hint and leave.

But here she was, in the flesh, rain streaming down her face. Her blond hair was shorter, wet through, darker than I remembered. She was a skinny thing, not the radiant beauty I remember from my childhood.

I was frozen at the door, unsure of what to do. She knew better than to come calling, that was strictly forbidden. We’d laid those ground rules years before, and she’d always listened. I was saved by the phone ringing. I glared at her and motioned for her to stay right where she was. Carol Ann was not invited into my house. Not after what she did all those years ago. It had taken me forever to get over that.

The phone kept trilling, so I turned and went to the marble side table in the foyer, the one that held the old fashioned rotary-dial. I picked it up, almost carelessly. It was Mama’s nurse at the Home. I listened. Felt the floor rushing up to meet me. Everything went dark after that.

***

When I woke, the sun was streaming in the kitchen window. Somehow I’d gotten myself to a chair. There was coffee brewing, the rich scent wafting to my nose. Carol Ann stood at the counter, a yellow cup in her hands. She took a deep drink, then smiled at me.

“Hey, stranger.” Her voice was soft, that semi-foreign lilt more pronounced, like she’d been living overseas lately.

“Hey, yourself,” I replied. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“You needed me.” She’d shrugged, a lock of lank blond falling across her forehead. “I’m sorry about your Mama. She was a good woman.”

I had a vision of Mama then, standing in the same spot, her hair in curlers, rushing to finish the preparations for a garden club meeting, stopping to lean back and take a sip of hot, sweet tea and smiling to herself because it was perfect. She was perfect. Mama was always perfection personified. Not flawed and messy like me. My heart hurt.

I forced myself to do the right thing. To do what needed to be done. My heart broke a little, and my head swam when I said, “Carol Ann, you need to leave. I don’t need you. I never did.”

She looked down at the floor, then met my eyes. Tear glistened in the corners, making the cornflower blue look like a wax crayon. “C’mon, Lily. We’re blood sisters, you and I. We’re a physical part of each other. How can you say you don’t need a part of yourself? The best part of yourself? I make you strong.”