The Fates Will Find Their Way Read Online Free PDF Page B

that too.
    “Kiss me again,” she said.
    He did, but he moved his hands from her face and she heard the sound of a belt buckle, not her own. She didn’t look down; she just kept kissing him, her face getting hotter, the heat spreading to her chest.
    She felt his hands on top of hers. She squeezed them. He squeezed hers back. He pulled them towards him, towards his pants, and what she felt was soft and not soft at the same time. This detail Minka was sure of, because she’d thought the same thing a month earlier when she and Marty Metcalfe spent seven minutes in a closet together. And, like Minka, Sissy claimed to know what she was feeling; she’d heard Nora talking with her friends before. She knew what was happening, and yet she’d said she felt something like homesickness in the bottom of her stomach.
    He kept his hands on top of hers, moving them as he wanted them to be moved. The whole time he kissed her, and this is what she tried to concentrate on. Whenever he took his hands away, she stopped, and he had to put his hands back in order to get hers to move again. It wasn’t complicated, but it also wasn’t easy.
    After awhile, he said, “You can put your mouth on it.” He said this while he was kissing her, and she couldn’t understand him, and she said so.
    “What?” she said, his mouth on top of hers. “What did you say?”
    He pulled back a little, said, “You can put your mouth on it if you want to.”
    This is when she stood up. She was shaking her head. She couldn’t speak.
    “Wait, Sissy,” he said. “Just wait.” His hand was on her waistline again, pulling at the button and zipper, pulling the fabric down.
    “Just let me see it,” he said. “Just let me see it.”
    She looked away and he pulled the fabric down hard, just enough so that her pubic hair was exposed. He made sounds. She closed her eyes. One hand held down her pants, the other hand was around himself, working.
    “Look at it,” he said.
    She looked at his face instead, but she was crying a little, hoping it would be over, wanting him to have whatever he needed to finish. His eyes were closed.
    “Look at it,” he said again. She did, even though he wouldn’t have known. She looked and she felt dizzy, felt like she was being held up only by the hand holding down her pants.
    “Sissy, Sissy, Sissy,” he leaned back his head, eyes still closed. “Sissy, Sissy, Sissy. Sit on it,” he said. “Just sit on it.”
    She turned away and saw, standing not four feet away, Mrs. Jeffreys in the doorway of the mudroom. Neither the girl nor the woman spoke. Mrs. Jeffreys was crying, a detail only Sissy knew, one she would refuse to reveal for years—even to Minka—out of respect for Mrs. Jeffreys or out of shame for what she’d done or maybe simply because admitting Mrs. Jeffreys’ tears would require admitting her own. Whatever the reason, the sight of Mrs. Jeffreys and her wet, crumpled face was enough to stop Sissy from crying.
    Another detail Sissy kept to herself for years was the fact that she’d seen her sister late on the night she disappeared, much later than anyone else. She’d knocked on her bedroom door and when Nora didn’t answer, Sissy let herself in. She was surprised, but only partly, to see her older sister under the bed, under the mattresses actually; Nora had taken out the slats that kept them elevated and now she was beneath them—the weight of the box spring and mattress fully on top of her. Her head was turned towards the door. Her eyes were open.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Killing myself,” Nora said.
    “Should I tell Dad?”
    “No.”
    “Can I borrow your fangs?”
    “Top drawer to the right,” Nora said.
    Sissy found the fangs, stood in front of her sister’s vanity, and put them on.
    “Can you breathe?”
    “More than I want,” said Nora.
    “Do you want me to sit on you?”
    “Maybe next time.”
    “Lights on or off?”
    “Off.”
    It would be wrong to say that Sissy didn’t think