What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman Page A

Heather, being Heather, had lied and said she’d lost hers, but slow-thinking Sunny had produced the ticket for Theater One, where Escape was playing. A shame, because busty as she was, Sunny might have passed for seventeen. If their ages were reversed, if Heather were the older one, she would have been able to get them out of it—lying smoothly to the usher about her lost ticket, claiming to be seventeen and arguing that a sister counted as the adult supervision required for an R movie. What was the good of an older sister if she didn’t act like one? Here was Sunny, on the verge of tears because of a stupid movie. Heather thought it was crazy, spending precious mall time to sit in the dark, when there were so many things to see and smell and taste.
    â€œIt was boring anyway,” Heather said. “Although it was scary when that guy got his nose cut.”
    â€œYou don’t know anything,” Sunny said. “That movie was directed by the man with the knife. Mr. Roman Polanski, whose wife was killed by Charles Manson. He’s a genius.”
    â€œLet’s go to Hoschild’s. Or the Pants Corral. I want to look at the Sta-Prest slacks.”
    â€œSlacks don’t wrinkle that much,” Sunny said, still snuffling a bit. “That’s stupid.”
    â€œIt’s what all the girls are wearing now that we’re allowed to wear pants to school.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t want a thing just because everyone else has it. Youdon’t want to run with the herd.” That was their father’s voice coming through Sunny’s mouth, and Heather knew that Sunny herself didn’t believe a word of it.
    â€œOkay, let’s go to Harmony Hut, then, or the bookstore.” On her last visit to the mall, Heather had sneaked a look at what seemed to be a dirty book, although she couldn’t be sure. There were lots of promising descriptions of the heroine’s breasts pressing against the thin fabric of her dress, usually a good sign that something dirty was about to happen. She was trying to work up her nerve to read the book with the zipper on the cover—not a real zipper, like the Rolling Stones album cover that Sunny owned, but one that nevertheless revealed a portion of a woman’s naked body. She needed to find a bigger book to put in front of it, so she could read it without drawing attention to herself. The staff at Waldenbooks didn’t care how long you stood there reading a book without buying it, as long as you didn’t try to sit down on the carpet. Then they chased you out.
    â€œI don’t want to do anything with you,” Sunny said. “I don’t care where you go. Just do your own thing and come back here at five-twenty.”
    â€œAnd you’ll buy me Karmelkorn.”
    â€œI gave you five dollars. Buy your own Karmelkorn.”
    â€œYou said five dollars and Karmelkorn.”
    â€œFine, fine, what does it matter? Come back here at five-twenty and you’ll get your precious Karmelkorn. But not if I see you hanging around me again. That was the deal, remember?”
    â€œWhy are you so mad at me?”
    â€œI just don’t want to hang out with a baby. Is that so hard to understand?”
    She headed toward the Sears end of the mall, the corridor with Harmony Hut and Singer Fashions. Heather thought about following her, Karmelkorn notwithstanding. Sunny had no right to call her a baby. Sunny was the babyish one, crying so easily over the smallest things. Heather wasn’t a baby.
    Once Heather had loved being the baby, had reveled in it. And when their mom had gotten pregnant, back when Heather was almost four, and they had started talking about “the baby,” it had bothered her. “I’m the baby,” she said hysterically, pushing a finger into the middle of her chest. “Heather’s the baby.” As if there could be only one baby in their family, in all the world.
    That was when they