Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (best ereader for graphic novels TXT) 📕

eyes scanned the congregation for any sign that Delia’s cracks might be showing.

Attention for attention’s sake was never her mother’s intent.

Delia had decided it wasn’t worth it to argue about going to confession year after year, and by the time she was sixteen, she barely spoke, just came downstairs wearing her thickest snow pants and, underneath them, layers of leggings.

Now it was June, and nobody seemed to notice anything odd, but by this point Delia had perfected being apart from everyone, even herself. Her eyes were glazed, and if she managed it just right—whoop—she was out of her body, looking down from a place where nobody could touch her.

Even her brother just stared out the window of the car as they drove to Mass, while she watched herself sitting next to him, folding wrappers, fitting the V’s together, sweating profusely in her Gore-Tex snow pants.

He was too full of himself now that he was a rodeo star. The only things he noticed were his reputation and his fancy Appaloosa–Quarter Horse mix, Maverick. Their father had bought Maverick with cash, as if he were just another pair of boots.

At the rodeos, girls lined up for miles to take their picture with Maverick and her brother, but mostly with her brother. Delia knew he was almost too handsome for his own good. He had begun to swagger and walk the way Hank did, as if there were a horse under him at all times.

He could not seem to lose any rodeo event he entered, and had even appeared in a magazine, Western Horseman, which had restored that proud glint in her mother’s eye for at least a month afterward.

Who wouldn’t be a rodeo star if they spent every waking hour down at the corral, running patterns, jumping barrels? Delia’s brother was meticulous in his training, and not a penny was spared to ensure that he would be the best. The boy who had once tried to find the most colorful gum wrappers for her—and who’d done anything to keep her from crying—was now sitting next to her in the car, yet Delia couldn’t get him to notice that she was dressed for a blizzard.

It didn’t matter. The real Delia was floating above them, too far away to care. She was a tiny speck next to the sun as it beat down from the dazzling Wyoming sky. She was higher than the Wind River Range, or the Bighorn Mountains, or even the Grand Tetons. Delia, the other Delia, the one inside the car whose brother refused to notice anymore, just laughed and laughed and laughed, heating up the windows as if they were sitting in a pressure cooker.

And then one day, Father Monster just up and left. A new priest arrived from India with a thick accent that barely anyone could understand, and nobody mentioned Father Lazaria again except to say he’d been “reassigned.”

Delia’s first thought was that God had not abandoned her after all. But that was instantly replaced with another thought that was not so easy to shake: Why did He take so long?

Her old babysitter, Michelle, came to visit out of the blue, with an engagement ring on her finger, saying she’d thought about Delia a lot over the years. Delia was skeptical. She could think of nothing to talk about, so she showed Michelle the gum chain, which when rolled up was the size of a volleyball.

Michelle couldn’t believe it. “I just got busy with the rest of my life and totally forgot even how to do this. But you might have a world record here.”

Delia remembered the way Michelle had gotten busy with “being a teenager and everything.” Now it was the rest of her life.

“I guess you forgot about me too,” Delia said. Her eyes had no light behind them.

“What happened?” asked Michelle quietly.

Delia just shook her head.

“Whatever it is, it’s not your fault,” said Michelle.

“People always say that,” said Delia, “but they don’t mean it.”

“Where’s the spunky girl I babysat all those years ago?” asked Michelle gently.

Delia realized she sounded rude. Michelle obviously sensed that Delia wasn’t that happy to see her.

“You were my favorite babysitter,” she said, but it was a feeble attempt.

“I’m sorry I stayed away so long. The little girl I knew would have fought her way out of anything. I do know that. She’s still in there, isn’t she?”

Michelle leaned forward and lightly tapped Delia’s shirt, just over her heart. Her engagement ring sparkled. Delia tried not to flinch.

—

A few months later she’d walked into her brother’s room to ask if she could ride Maverick. Not far, just around the corral.

Her brother was sobbing facedown into his pillow, and she recognized it for what it was. She knew that kind of crying, that curling into a fetal position. The way a person’s body holds grief and fear, and the shaking that comes from keeping it all inside until it’s just too much. It finally spills out and cannot be contained, even by the most expensive cotton pillowcases in the house.

She lay down beside him, matching the question-mark shape of his body with her own in silent acknowledgment. In recognition.

“He has a list,” her brother said after what seemed like hours of just lying next to each other. “It’s inside his Bible. A long, long list, as if he’s so proud of himself.”

His voice was like ice cracking on a frozen pond.

“Your name is in there. But I believed you from the first, Delia. I really did. I just knew it was pointless to say anything. And then it was me, and what would people say, how could that happen to a boy who was ranked first in the state in pole bending and barrel racing? I just hoped maybe he wasn’t hurting you anymore. And then you came down in your snow pants, and I knew.”

So he had noticed.

She tightened her arm around his chest, breathing into his wide back that smelled of hay and horses. Her beautiful, broken rodeo star