My Sisters And Me

by Lisa Dickenson

  ‘Fine.’ Rae stood up and gave her old friend a hug. ‘I’ll drink a snake bite for you.’

  ‘Be sure that you do.’

  ‘I’d better leave you to it for now and get back to my manual labour. Catch up again soon?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  As Rae was leaving the house and walking down the driveway, she turned back, and looking out of the window at her was Gabbi. When she caught Rae’s eye she waved, and then mimicked dancing on a table, holding a cigarette in one hand and her boob in the other. Rae laughed, and then crossed paths with a very surprised-looking postman.

  It felt like hours that Noelle and Jenny chatted over coffee. Talking to her was easy, despite everything, and Noelle wondered more than once at how on the same page her head and her heart were.

  They left The Wooden Café and paused outside to say goodbye.

  ‘I know I keep saying it,’ started Noelle. ‘But it’s really nice to be spending time with you again, J.’

  ‘Just nice?’ Jenny asked, and Noelle’s heart did a small bounce. Was that flirting?

  ‘More than nice. Really very extremely good, actually.’

  ‘Well, I thought so too,’ she agreed. ‘But don’t get any ideas.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Noelle answered. Too late. Noelle’s intention wasn’t to start up anything with Jenny again, it was too complicated, they were too out of touch. But she missed everything about her. She wondered briefly if it would be cute or weird to learn the Bieber ‘Sorry’ dance routine to try and win her back… ‘Can I see you again? As friends?’

  Jenny tossed her hair back as she laughed. ‘What am I getting myself into? Yes, that would be nice. As friends. I’ll come over and help with some renovations on my days off, if you like.’

  ‘I would like that!’

  Jenny left towards her shop, while Noelle walked the other way to meet her sister. If she’d told herself a few weeks back that she would be here under the autumn sun, smiling and flirting with her first love, she would have laughed herself out of her courtroom.

  Rae waited for Noelle outside the nicer sweetshop, where she’d stocked up on some nibbles to help get them through the last of the bedroom clear-outs, which they really needed to get on with.

  The centre of Maplewood was preparing for Halloween, in the understated way a rural market town in England does. Pumpkins carved into grizzly grinning faces were popping up on doorsteps and windowsills, and cut-outs of black cats and witches decorated windows. As Rae stood there admiring the scene, Kelvin wandered past. He stopped and grinned at her. ‘Still here, Rae?’ he asked, unnecessarily.

  ‘I could say the same to you,’ she answered. She looked at his chubby head and sweaty body. He really hadn’t blossomed, this one.

  ‘I’ve got a joke for you, right. How long does it take three hippies to paint a house? Dunno? Go and visit the Lake sisters in a year or so and they’ll tell you!’ He guffawed.

  Rae stepped back to avoid being showered with spit. ‘You should really spend more time looking at your own life than looking at ours. It’s kind of weird.’

  ‘It was just a joke, man, chill out.’

  ‘I’m very chill, man. I just think you’re kind of obsessed. Why do you even care what we’re doing?’

  ‘I dunno, maybe because we’re buds.’ He looked at her like she was a right thicko.

  She was shocked. ‘We were never buds.’

  ‘We were buds with everyone.’

  ‘You were popular, and people worshipped or feared you. Did you think you were everyone’s friend, though?’

  ‘Yeah, course.’

  ‘But you tortured people. Me and my sisters, to name a few.’

  ‘It was a joke. God, are you on your period or something?’

  Rae threw her hands in the air. ‘I’m not on my period, I’m just trying to have a conversation with you. Do you even realise you were a massive, dick-for-brains bully?’

  ‘Shut up was I.’ Kelvin was clearly getting uncomfortable now and he started to walk away. ‘I wasn’t a bully. You’re the bully. Bitch.’ He walked off grumbling.

  But it was a good thing. Rae realised you can’t win them all. And while she wanted the Halloween party to mend some fences and maybe even make this a nicer place for her mum to live, going forward, she realised she didn’t have to bow down to the bullies. Kelvin and Tom did not need an invite.

  Chapter 16

  Back at the house, Jared was lying on his back at the edge of Rae’s room, a block of wood wrapped in sandpaper in his hand, and flecks of silver paint from the skirting boards settling like dust on the carpet, his clothes and his face. On the other side of the room, Emmy was sanding the door frame.

  ‘So you never knew your parents were Wiccans at all?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope. Hippies, yes. “Earthy”, yes. But to us they were always just grown-up versions of Noelle.’ She paused to mop her brow before she sweated dust into her contacts. ‘I did think they might be naturists though. I never saw them in the nude, unlike poor Noelle, but I always thought they both seemed very sun-kissed all the time, and I never saw any noticeable tan lines.’

  Emmy had invited Jared over after her impromptu crying session. Being alone in this version of home didn’t seem to do her any good, and, anyway, she wanted to get his thoughts on the Halloween party. Plus, he’d helped out when they’d all painted their rooms these garish colours, all those years ago, so it seemed only fair he helped them slick on the twelve coats it would take to cover them up. Plus, he was yum. She might have mentioned that?

  She left the door frame partially done and joined him, slumping down to sit on the floor beside him and brushing the silver out of his hair. She caught herself midway through, still surprised at how comfortable she felt doing such an intimate thing with Jared after all these years. He was still part of her, that was cemented.

  Emmy was lying to herself, though she really didn’t want to admit that she was wrong and that she was excited about something Maplewood had to offer. She was trying to play it cool, trying to focus on the job at hand, because she Wasn’t Here For Fun. But a fraction of her mind couldn’t stop thinking about Jared.

  ‘I have to ask you something.’ She pulled her hand away, and he sat up, cross-legged next to her. Focus. ‘If we had a Halloween party, here, and invited all these people that are apparently gossiping about us, to try and bury the hatchet, would you think it was a good idea?’

  ‘You’re having a party? Willow’s going to be mad…’

  ‘I know, but Mum is the least of my worries right now. So, what do you think, and would you come?’

  Jared leaned his heavy body against hers and thought about it. ‘I don’t think lying low is going to resolve anything. On the battlefield – Maplewood being your battlefield – there are only three ways to win the war. One: going into hiding and waiting for it to be over. And that’s not really winning, plus how will you ever know for sure it’s over? Two: surrendering. And you’d be disappointed in yourselves if you did that, because it’s letting them win. Or three: calling a truce. In the form of a Halloween party.’

  ‘So you think it’s a good idea?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What about actually winning? Couldn’t we do that instead?’

  ‘I think calling a truce is winning, in this particular war. Because it’s not actually a war, and your mum’s going to be still living here, as is everyone else, even though you’ll be leaving again.’

  Emmy sighed and met Jared’s eye, who pouted at her.

  ‘Do you have to leave again?’ he asked. ‘I don’t have any other friends.’

  She shoved him. ‘That’s not true, you have lots of friends, you always did. You don’t need me any more.’

  ‘You’re right, you suck at Sonic the Hedgehog anyway, from what I remember, so why would I need you?’

  ‘Will you come, then, on Halloween?’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it. I don’t know how wild you’re planning it to be, but I’ll have
to head home early-ish, or at least not drink. I have an early shift the next morning.’

  ‘Okay. Will you dress up?’

  ‘As what?’

  ‘Anything you like. We’re going as the witch sisters from Hocus Pocus.’ Emmy of now and Emmy of the past were equally excited about this.

  ‘How appropriate. Could I go as a cop? Then I could just sleep in my clothes and go straight to work.’

  ‘I’m sure that would please a lot of the female guests,’ Emmy smiled, getting up to resume work. ‘I’m so glad you’re going to come along,’ she added.

  ‘Me too.’ He grinned at her, lying back down on the floor. ‘Wow, a Halloween party at the house in the woods. I hear that place is haunted.’

  When Rae and Noelle arrived home, they came bearing lunch, and to the delight of Jared they had enough for everyone.

  Over pasties and pastries, the four of them sat facing the laptop, ready to make the party guest list.

  ‘How do we actually invite people,’ asked Emmy. ‘Are we going to post invitations to their houses? Email them?’

  ‘No, thicko, we’ll just do it all through Facebook, we’ll set up an event.’ Rae pulled the laptop towards her and started tapping on the keys.

  ‘Nooooo, no, no, no,’ Emmy cried. ‘I’ve seen the news, I know how out of hand those Facebook parties get. I read that one kid had forty thousand people descend on his home because he put it on Facebook.’

  ‘We’re not going to make it free for all, it’ll be a closed, invite-only event. And we’ll be the only ones allowed to invite people. Relax, dork.’

  ‘You are full of the name-calling today, moron,’ Emmy retorted.

  ‘Ahh, the serene sounds of the Lake sisters,’ commented Jared, closing his eyes as if it was the most relaxing thing in the world.

  Rae flipped open Noelle’s legal pad and started writing. ‘So thus far we know we’re asking you, Jared, Jenny, I’ve asked Gabbi and she’s a no, but I’m going to put her on the list anyway… Bloody hell, who else? Annette?’

  ‘I have an idea!’ Noelle piped up. ‘Let’s look at that Facebook page Bonnie showed us, about our house being haunted.’

  ‘We’re kind of in the middle of something…’ said Rae.

  ‘I mean to find people to invite. Let’s look at who’s liked the page, and if we see familiar names – people that we once knew – we then see if their profiles say they still live here, and if so, boom. Added to the guest list.’

  ‘Do you really want a bunch of wannabe paranormal investigators in your home?’ Jared asked.

  ‘I think if it’s people we know they’re more likely to be the Nosey Noras than the ghost-hunters,’ she replied.

  ‘All right, let’s take a look.’ Rae navigated to the page and the list of people that had liked it. ‘There’s a few names I remember, but not many… some faces though. I guess some of them have married and changed their names.’ She let out a whopping sigh. ‘I feel like I’m trying to organise a high-school reunion, only I don’t remember any of the people from high school.’

  ‘I remember some of them,’ Emmy said, leaning closer. ‘Those two girls were the ones that tried to form a girl group and they held auditions in the sports hall. I so, so wanted to go, but I would have been laughed right out of there.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t make it big and it seems that one, Becky, is still living here in Maplewood. She’s on the list.’

  ‘Look at that comment, under the photo.’ Noelle pointed at the screen. She read aloud, ‘“I was in the same school year as one of the kids that lived in this house. They were WEIRD. When their parents came to parents’ evening it was like the Addams Family had walked in.” That’s not true, we weren’t Goths, apart from Rae for a period.’

  ‘That comment had twenty-six likes,’ said Rae.

  Noelle continued, ‘The reply has thirty. “Yes! My mum was always telling me to stay away from that end of town! I grew up afraid of the woods because of them.”’

  ‘Good,’ Rae stated, adding the names to the list. ‘We wouldn’t have wanted people with no balls hanging around anyway.’

  Noelle sank down on to her hands. ‘I knew we were unpopular, but I thought it was because we were eccentric and they thought Rae was always causing trouble, and because I was gay. I didn’t know everybody thought we were creepy. We weren’t creepy. We were actually really nice.’

  ‘Let’s not lose focus,’ Rae said, rounding up her sisters. ‘There seems to be a million intertwined reasons Maplewood didn’t give us a fair shot. Now we’re going to reclaim our place here and show them what a beautiful, welcoming, bright and not-at-all-creepy house this is. Aside from a few Halloween decorations. And we will be so nice and so charming that they’re going to hate themselves for the lost years where they could have been our friends and made the most of our bomb-ass woods. Ain’t that right, Jared?’

  ‘Word.’

  By mid-afternoon, with the help of Jared – who actually was in the know about who in the town would benefit from a wake-up call in the form of a party – the guest list was sorted. The Facebook party invite was set up, and with a flourish, the three sisters laid their fingers atop each other and hit enter.

  Now all they could do was wait, and see if the least popular kids around would have anyone agree to come to their party.

  Another week of frantic decorating passed and the house was really starting to take shape. Noelle was doing a great job on the outside, when the weather permitted, and the entire exterior was now painted a bright cream, which was pretty against the woodland backdrop. And Noelle had only had one major incident where she’d had to peel Vicky off the side of the building when she’d brushed up against the wet paint, but a gentle bath and some baby shampoo and she was back clucking about outside in no time.

  The porch was built and varnished and the older windows were sparkling clean (at least from the outside). Noelle just had to tackle the driveway, so that it actually looked like a driveway to unsuspecting visitors, rather than a path to nowhere, and do a little plant pruning, lawn mowing and general prettying around the garden.

  Inside the house, a transformation was also occurring. The kitchen and living room did, Emmy reluctantly agreed, flow better without the big heavy door that had separated them. And thanks to the electrician who’d called his plumber pal over to ‘whack in an extra radiator’, the house was toasty-ish. The spotlights were looking good and the paintwork was all complete. Now all that was left to do was rip up the old carpets, build the window seat, take delivery of some new furniture, and finish the Grand Clear-Out, which at the moment felt like it had barely started. Instead, boxes and piles and memorabilia and crap were just being shunted out of the way in every room.

  They had a week before the party, and Rae, Noelle and Emmy had tasked themselves with tackling the last of the crap in Rae’s room first, since the twin beds were arriving the next day.

  They sat on the floor, drinks and snacks beside them, and as they picked through boxes of paperwork and dusty Alanis Morissette albums, they entertained themselves with Truth or Dare. Rae’s idea.

  ‘Okay, Noey,’ Emmy said, picking up a dead cat – oh, no, it was a monster-foot slipper that was covered in dust and something syrupy. She gagged and chucked it in the bin liner. ‘Truth or dare?’

  ‘Truth,’ she answered with a smile. Noelle loved telling the truth.

  ‘Did you ever lie in court so you could win a case, because you knew the environment would be better because of it?’

  ‘No!’ Noelle gasped, then thought. ‘But I have omitted information because I knew it would really muddle things. Rae, your turn.’

  ‘Dare.’

  ‘Ooo, okay.’ After a long period of Noelle staring into space while the others just cracked on, she suddenly snapped her fingers. ‘I dare you to hair-mascara your hair and wear it that way for the rest of the day.’

  ‘Easy,’ scoffed Rae. ‘Just call me Harley Quinn.’ She pulled her hair into bunches and grabbed some
very crusty hair mascaras from the shoebox of old make-up and slicked red on one side and blue on the other.

  Dammit, thought Emmy, she still looked good.

  Rae turned, triumphant, onwards. ‘Emmy, truth or dare?’

  ‘Truth, please, maybe.’

  ‘Do you ever wish you’d kissed Jared?’

  Emmy rolled her eyes. ‘This is like déjà vu, you used to ask me this every time you made us play Truth or Dare.’

  ‘And you always lied, so now I want the truth.’

  ‘What makes you think I was lying?’

  ‘Because when you lie you blush and your eyes start stinging and you have to take your glasses off or your contacts out and rub them for about ten minutes.’

  ‘No, I don’t wish I’d kissed Jared,’ Emmy replied. Her eye started to twitch.

  ‘It’s happening, it’s happening,’ pointed Noelle with happiness.

  ‘Fine, fine, fine, yes, I wish we’d kissed.’ Her sisters whooped their heads off, but when she managed to get them to calm down she added, ‘But not because I fancied him, because it would have been nice to know what a kiss felt like, not just from my Mark Owen poster.’

  Noelle went back to looking through Rae’s old school work, satisfied. ‘That’s fair enough.’

  Rae however, had turned to face away and was mimicking snogging someone with their hands all over her back while she moaned, ‘Mmm, Jared, I love your wet-look gel.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Emmy grabbed a tub of body glitter from the shoebox and threw it at her older sister.

  ‘Ow.’ Rae stopped and picked it up. ‘I don’t know why this is in here, this must be yours. Body glitter was so not my thing. Noelle’s turn again!’

  Emmy held up a hand. ‘Let’s switch who asks who this time.’

  ‘Can I ask Emmy one?’ Noelle grinned.

  ‘I just went! But, fine, let’s get this over with. Dare this time though, because I’m not using a dare on Rae’s turn asking.’

  ‘Hmm… I had a truth in mind, but okay, a dare…’ Noelle went back to staring into space.