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

“Louise, you have to stop this.”

“What?”

“You guys broke up almost two years ago.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I think you need to talk to someone.”

“I talk to Addie all the time.”

The look on his face is so full of love and concern, she thinks she might cry. Goddamn him, making her talk. Making her say Addie’s name out loud.

She’s suddenly so exhausted she can’t hold her head up. She doesn’t even care that her cheek is pressing against dirty Formica that smells like old soup; she just wants to melt into the table and let the Jackson Five sing her to sleep with their lousy rendition of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” bleating out of the old jukebox.

“I called your sisters a few days ago,” he says.

Or she thinks he says it, but she is half dreaming now.

She and Addie are playing follow-the-leader in the woods. “Be as quiet as you can,” she tells Addie. “If I hear you at all, then you lose and we switch places, until one of us is queen.”

Addie is so good at this game. Louise leads them through the dry sagebrush and doesn’t even hear Addie’s sneakers on the path behind her. She keeps going, sure Addie will give herself away, but minutes go by and there’s not even a giggle. She keeps going, into the dense alders, and still Addie is quiet, determined to win. Louise knows she will have to give in and declare Addie queen for the day, but she decides to walk just a bit farther, to the money bear, the stump that looks like a baby bear, where people leave coins if they have them. There’s always a dime or a nickel stashed in the wooden grooves when the girls get there.

“You win!” Louise shouts, pulling a quarter—big-money day!—from the money bear’s gnarled paw and turning to hand it to her sister. No Addie.

For the hundredth time tonight, someone is shaking her shoulders. Her face feels glued to the table, and it takes all her strength to lift her head. She can smell fresh coffee, sees two more cups being set down by Maeve, the waitress who has known them all since forever. Tonight she has a red streak in her hair and a look of concern as she softly runs a hand over Louise’s head, then turns back to the kitchen.

Louise tries to focus.

“Gladys? What are you doing here?”

“I’m here too, bug,” says Izzy. Her sisters look huge, standing next to the table.

“She’s been—I don’t know—imagining things, or talking about things that aren’t real,” Nate is saying. “She thinks Addie’s home, telling her not to go out. She doesn’t seem to remember that she and Finn aren’t together anymore.”

“Shouldn’t you two be in school?” says Louise.

Gladys and Izzy slide into the booth and Louise feels an arm around her shoulders, smells oranges, because Izzy always smells like oranges.

“I’m fine,” she mumbles. “What is this, some kind of intervention?”

“You don’t look fine,” says Gladys.

“Yeah, I’m a drug addict,” says Louise. It’s a joke. Nobody laughs.

“We know,” says Izzy. “We found your stash.”

“A few pills. God, Izzy, ‘stash’? Seriously.”

“Not that you were trying to hide it or anything. All those shoe boxes full of pill bottles, stuffed into your old doll houses?”

“Those are dioramas,” says Louise, putting her head back on the table. And they’re not mine, they’re Addie’s.

“Is she going to be okay?” Nate asks.

“She needs help,” Izzy says. “We’re getting her treatment. God, Nate, thank you so much for calling us.”

Nate has been spying on me?

“I have to go home. Addie’s waiting….” She didn’t mean to say it out loud.

“Shhh, honey, Addie isn’t at home. You know this. She was missing for two years, Louise. They just found her body in August.”

Gladys is crying. Izzy is crying. Louise is beginning to hear what they’re saying, which means she needs another pill, just to take the edge off. She does not want to live in the real world, where her little sister was about to be queen for a day and then disappeared forever. All because of Louise.

Her parents are splitting up because they can’t handle it anymore, and maybe Finn doesn’t want to be her boyfriend either, because who would? Has it really been two years since they split up? He must have told Nate all her secrets.

“I was sick of watching him let you numb yourself to death,” says Nate. “I don’t care if you hate me, Louise, this is killing me. The way everyone pretends nothing is happening and the world just falls apart around you. I’m sorry. I had to do something.”

He is incredibly serious as he unwraps Louise’s fingers from the coffee mug and then rewraps both his hands over hers. She stares at the familiar curve of his thumb, the bitten-down nails, the brown semicircle birthmark on his left knuckle, exactly like the one Finn has on his right. Two halves of a full moon.

Tom Petty is blaring through the speakers because Maeve, in her Maeve way, has surreptitiously turned up the music.

You belong among the wildflowers.

“Were you in Alaska or something?” she asks, pulling a vague memory from somewhere.

“No, not Alaska. You’re thinking of Finn again. But thanks for noticing I was gone.”

He’s actually laughing, but there’s also a real tear streaming down his cheek, or is that a scar that she’s never seen before?

“Don’t be mad at Finn,” Louise says.

“I told him if he gives you any more pills I will kick his ass to the moon,” says Nate.

Gladys laughs, and the tension pops like a balloon.

“You win, Nate. You are the best Carson,” she says.

“And we are qualified to judge,” says Izzy.

Louise puts her head on the table again. She was grateful when Finn started giving her the pills, right after they found Addie’s body. Everyone else had moved on to grieving, but Louise did not want to move on. She hears Addie telling her not to leave the house tonight. She knows she will never