The Little Friend by Donna Tartt Page A

her to go with him to some Christmas party until at last (rubbing her shoulders through the thin sleeves of her night-gown) she blinked and said Fine. But when it was time to get ready, she sat at her dressing table in her bathrobe and stared at her reflection without putting on lipstick or taking the pins out of her hair. When Allison tiptoed upstairs to check on her, she said she had a migraine. Then she locked herself in the bathroom and ran the taps until Harriet’s father (red in the face, trembling) pounded on the door with his fists. It had been a miserable Christmas Eve, Harriet and Allison sitting rigidly in the living room by the tree, as the Christmas carols (alternately sonorous and jubilant) swelled powerfully from the stereo, not quite powerful enough to cover the shouting upstairs. It was a relief when Harriet’s father clumped out to his car with his suitcase and his shopping bag of presents early on Christmas afternoon and drove away again, up to Tennessee, and the household settled back with a sigh into its own forgetful doze.
    Harriet’s house was a sleepy house—for everybody but Harriet, who was wakeful and alert by nature. When she was the only person awake in the dark, silent house, as she oftenwas, the boredoms that settled over her were so dense, so glassy and confused, that sometimes she was unable to do anything but gape at a window or a wall, as if doped. Her mother stayed in her bedroom pretty much all the time; and after Allison went to bed—early, most nights, around nine—Harriet was on her own: drinking milk straight out of the carton, wandering through the house in her stocking feet, through the stacks of newspaper which were piled high in nearly every room. Harriet’s mother, since Robin’s death, had developed an odd inability to throw anything away and the junk which packed the attic and cellar had now begun to creep into the rest of the house.
    Sometimes Harriet enjoyed being up by herself. She switched on lights, turned on the television or the record player, called Dial-a-Prayer or made prank calls to the neighbors. She ate what she wanted out of the refrigerator; she clambered up on high shelves, and poked through cabinets she wasn’t supposed to open; she jumped on the sofa till the springs squealed, and pulled the cushions on the ground and built forts and life rafts on the floor. Sometimes she pulled her mother’s old college clothes out of the closet (pastel sweaters with moth holes, elbow gloves in every color, an aqua prom dress that—on Harriet—dragged a foot upon the ground). This was dangerous; Harriet’s mother was quite particular about the clothes, though she never wore them; but Harriet was careful about putting everything back the way she’d found it and if her mother ever noticed anything amiss, she never mentioned it.
    None of the guns were loaded. The only ammunition in the case was a box of twelve-gauge shells. Harriet, who had only the haziest idea of the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, shook the shells out of the box and arranged them in starburst patterns on the carpet. One of the big guns had a bayonet attachment, which was interesting, but her favorite was the Winchester with the telescopic scope. She switched off the overhead light and propped the barrel on the sill of the living-room window and looked down the scope with narrowed eyes—at parked cars, pavement sparkling under the high lamps and sprinklers hissing on lush empty lawns. Thefort was under attack; she was guarding her post and all their lives depended on it.
    Wind chimes tinkled on Mrs. Fountain’s front porch. Across the overgrown lawn, along the oily barrel of the gun, she could see the tree her brother had died in. A breeze whispered in the glossy leaves, jingling the liquid shadows on the grass.
    Sometimes, when Harriet was prowling the gloomy house late at night, she felt her dead brother draw close to her side, his silence friendly, confidential. She heard his