The Fates Will Find Their Way Read Online Free PDF

strange sister.

3
    I t was Sissy, fourteen, who—exactly one year after her sister disappeared—led Kevin Thorpe, eighteen, into the mudroom. She took him by the hand at Sarah Jeffreys’ Halloween party and led him to the mudroom off the rear garage. It was her idea and it was that simple. Kevin didn’t force her to go in there, regardless of what anyone else might say.
    Girls who saw them go off together said she was too easy. They said having a sister go missing turned Sissy into a tramp. “It’s not her fault,” they said. “But still.” We might have pointed out to the girls that they—and not Sissy—were the ones dressed as skimpy bunny rabbits, as trashy vampires who’d just gotten out of bed, as season-impaired police officers. We might have, but we didn’t. We knew they were hoping for our attention, but we had a hard time getting over how ridiculous they looked shivering in the winter chill, their determination to look sexy preventing them from dressing for the weather.
    Of course, we knew Sissy wasn’t a tramp because we knew Kevin Thorpe would be the first to be alone with her. We’d been keeping track. We had, in fact, been watching her since the day her sister disappeared. Probably we were filled with the desire to shake Kevin Thorpe’s hand and then punch him in the face. Trey Stephens had gotten Nora, and now Kevin Thorpe was getting her little sister. It wasn’t fair, and we said so under our breath.
    “So it goes,” said Chuck Goodhue, who then ran off to tell Paul Epstein because he knew it would break Paul Epstein’s heart.
    S issy liked the kissing, at least according to Minka Dinnerman, who’d been her best friend since lower school. She’d told Minka it was wet and soft and alien. She said it took her out of herself and brought her back into herself all at once. According to Minka, there’d been a lot of talking, as well as kissing, which Minka thought was weird and she’d said so to Sissy. Their nine-year friendship didn’t last the month of November.
    “I just want to kiss you,” Sissy had said in the mudroom, giggling at her own shamelessness.
    “I just want to touch you,” Kevin Thorpe had said, and maybe she’d felt sexy when he said it. Maybe she’d thought he was being flirtatious.
    They kissed more. He backed up, pulling her with him, over to an old sofa. He sat down. She stayed standing. He put his hands on the waistline of her jeans. She put her hands on top of his, pulled them away.
    “Sit down with me,” he said.
    She sat down, tucked her legs beneath her the way Nora used to sit when boys were around. This way Sissy was a little higher than Kevin, and probably she felt slightly more in control despite the age difference, despite the fact that he was a year older than Nora even, or older than Nora would have been.
    He pulled her face towards his and she liked it. She liked being moved around.
    “I like the way you manhandle me,” she said. The line was from a movie maybe, she couldn’t remember. She felt impossibly sexy.
    “I like the way you won’t shut up,” he said.
    She giggled. This went on for some time. The kissing, the back and forth. Both of them sitting, never lying down, but constantly repositioning.
    After awhile he went for her pants again, and again she moved his hands away.
    “You’re good at that,” he said.
    “Thank you,” she said. It felt like play. It felt like what it was supposed to feel like. But then he put his hands on her pants again, and this time she felt her face get hot.
    “We can’t have sex,” she said.
    He laughed at her. “I wasn’t going to have sex with you,” he said.
    She felt her face get hotter. She felt young suddenly. She said, “Oh,” and moved back away from him a little.
    “You’re embarrassed,” he said.
    “I’m embarrassed,” she said.
    “You’re also cute,” he said. He put his hands on either side of her face. She felt small in those hands and she liked it. He smiled at her. She liked