Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones

Artie watched her get in line. She was still unaware, just picking up on the excitement in the air – figuring the mousetrap competition had been announced.

He kept his eye on Lindsey and saw the closest flier was posted at the end of the food line over the utensils tray. He was listening to a story about Jack the Ripper that someone at the table was relaying. He stood to return his tray.

When he reached my sister, he cleared his throat. All my hopes were pinned on this wobbly boy. “Catch her,” I said. A prayer going down to Earth.

“Lindsey,” Artie said.

Lindsey looked at him. “Yes?”

Behind the counter the army cook held out a spoon full of scrambled eggs to plop on her tray.

“I’m Artie, from your sister’s grade.”

“I don’t need any coffins,” Lindsey said, moving her tray down the metalwork to where there was orange juice and apple juice in big plastic pitchers.

“What?”

“Samuel told me you were building balsa wood coffins for the mice this year. I don’t want any.”

“They changed the competition,” he said.

That morning Lindsey had decided she would take the bottom off of Clarissa’s dress. It would be perfect for the mouse couch.

“To what?”

“Do you want to go outside?” Artie used his body to shadow her and block her passage to the utensils. “Lindsey,” he blurted. “The competition is about murder.”

She stared at him.

Lindsey held on to her tray. She kept her eyes locked on Artie.

“I wanted to tell you before you read the flier,” he said.

Samuel rushed into the tent.

“What’s going on?” Lindsey looked helplessly at Samuel.

“This year’s competition is how to commit the perfect murder,” Samuel said.

Samuel and I saw the tremor. The inside shakeoff of her heart. She was getting so good the cracks and fissures were smaller and smaller Soon, like a sleight-of-hand trick perfected, no one would see her do it. She could shut out the whole world, including herself.

“I’m fine,” she said.

But Samuel knew she wasn’t.

He and Artie watched her back as she departed.

“I was trying to warn her,” Artie said weakly.

Artie returned to his table. He drew hypodermics, one after another. His pen pressed harder and harder as he colored in the embalming fluid inside, as he perfected the trajectory of the three drops squirting out.

Lonely , I thought, on Earth as it is in heaven .

“You kill people by stabbing and cutting and shooting,” Ruth said. “It’s sick.”

“Agreed,” Artie said.

Samuel had taken my sister away to talk. Artie had seen Ruth at one of the outside picnic tables with her big blank book.

“But there are good reasons to kill,” Ruth said.

“Who do you think did it?” Artie asked. He sat on the bench and braced his feet up under the table on the crossbar.

Ruth sat almost motionless, right leg crossed over left, but her foot jiggled ceaselessly.

“How did you hear?” she asked.

“My father told us,” Artie said. “He called my sister and me into the family room and made us sit down.”

“Shit, what did he say?”

“First he said that horrible things happened in the world and my sister said, ‘Vietnam,’ and he was quiet because they always fight about that whenever it comes up. So he said, ‘No, honey, horrible things happen close to home, to people we know.’ She thought it was one of her friends.”

Ruth felt a raindrop.

“Then my dad broke down and said a little girl had been killed. I was the one who asked who. I mean, when he said ‘little girl,’ I pictured little , you know. Not us.”

It was a definite drop, and they began to land on the redwood tabletop.

“Do you want to go in?” Artie asked.

“Everyone else will be inside,” Ruth said.

“I know.”

“Let’s get wet.”

They sat still for a while and watched the drops fall around them, heard the sound against the leaves of the tree above.

“I knew she was dead. I sensed it,” Ruth said, “but then I saw a mention of it in my dad’s paper and I was sure. They didn’t use her name at first. Just ‘Girl, fourteen.’ I asked my dad for the page but he wouldn’t give it to me. I mean, who else and her sister hadn’t been in school all week?”

“I wonder who told Lindsey?” Artie said. The rain picked up. Artie slipped underneath the table. “We’re going to get soaked,” he yelled up.

And then as quickly as the rain had started, it ceased. Sun came through the branches of the tree above her, and Ruth looked up past them. “I think she listens,” she said, too softly to be heard.

It became common knowledge at the symposium who my sister was and how I had died.

“Imagine being stabbed,” someone said.

“No thanks.”

“I think it’s cool.”

“Think of it – she’s famous.”

“Some way to get famous. I’d rather win the Nobel Prize.”

“Does anyone know what she wanted to be?”

“I dare you to ask Lindsey.”

And they listed the dead they knew.

Grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, some had a parent, rarer was a sister or brother lost young to an illness – a heart irregularity – leukemia – an unpronounceable disease. No one knew anyone who had been murdered. But now they knew me.

Under a rowboat that was too old and worn to float, Lindsey lay down on the earth with Samuel Heckler, and he held her.

“You know I’m okay,” she said, her eyes dry. “I think Artie was trying to help me,” she offered.

“You can stop now, Lindsey,” he said. “We’ll just lie here and wait until things quiet down.”

Samuel’s back was flush against the ground, and he brought my sister close into his body to protect her from the dampness of the quick summer rain. Their breath began to heat the small space beneath the boat, and he could not stop it – his penis stiffened inside his jeans.

Lindsey reached her hand over.

“I’m sorry…” he began.

“I’m ready,” my sister said.

At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.

“How to Commit the Perfect Murder” was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

When my father woke up at four A.M., the house was quiet. My mother lay beside him, lightly snoring. My brother, the only child, what with my sister attending the symposium, was like a rock with a sheet pulled up over him. My father marveled at what a sound sleeper he was – just like me. While I was still alive, Lindsey and I had had fun with that, clapping, dropping books, and even banging pot lids to see if Buckley would wake up.

Before leaving the house, my father checked on Buckley – to make sure, to feel the warm breath against his palm. Then he suited up in his thin-soled sneakers and light jogging outfit. His last task was to put Holiday’s collar on.

It was still early enough that he could almost see his breath. He could pretend at that early hour that it was still winter. That the seasons had not advanced.

The morning dog walk gave him an excuse to pass by Mr. Harvey’s house. He slowed only slightly – no one would have noticed save me or, if he had been awake, Mr. Harvey. My father was sure that if he just stared hard enough, just looked long enough, he would find the clues he needed in the casements of the windows, in the green paint coating the shingles, or along the driveway, where two large stones sat, painted white.

By late summer 1974, there had been no movement on my case. No body. No killer. Nothing.

My father thought of Ruana Singh: “When I was sure, I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him.” He had not told this to Abigail because the advice made a sort of baseline sense that would frighten her into telling someone, and he suspected that someone might be Len.