Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The Who-Haw Incident
T here was no after-the-funeral party for Thalia. She was lucky she even had a spot in an actual cemetery. Reduced to ashes to be split up, spread around, left as fading dust in a breeze that would carry her memory into who-knows-what-or-where . It seemed like a fitting end to Thalia’s life, even as sad as it sounded.
Even having the smallest of funerals was a bad idea. A stupid idea. A risky idea. It made Nelle uneasy. Even back at Calista’s small apartment, she caught herself looking out the window constantly.
Calista drank a bottle of wine like it was water. The drinking didn’t surprise Nelle at all. Her two sisters thrived with a little bit of a rebellious streak that was completely understood yet came with a lot of problems.
Calista stumbled out of her attempt of a kitchen—which was merely an extension of the living room with a fridge, stove, sink, and microwave. She dropped the empty wine bottle to the floor, then sat down on the arm of her couch.
Standing at the window— again —Nelle looked back at her sister and did a double take. She sighed.
“Calista, you’re not wearing panties,” Nelle said. “Really?”
Calista looked down. Her dress had been pulled up when she sat down. Way up. Showing off her…
“Oh well,” Calista said.
“No class at all, huh?”
“My sister was fucking murdered!” Calista yelled.
“What does that have to do with your who-haw showing?” Nelle yelled back.
Calista instantly burst into a fit of laughter.
“What?” Nelle asked.
“You called my pussy a who-haw ! I haven’t heard that in years!”
Calista kept laughing. She began to waver and quickly fell off the arm of the couch and hit the floor with a scream.
“Great,” Nelle whispered to herself.
As she walked to check on her sister, she grabbed a messy, balled up blanket off the couch to cover her sister up with.
Calista was on the floor, propped up on her elbows. No longer laughing, still smiling, tears in her eyes.
She looked up at Nelle. “ Who-haw… ”
Nelle crouched down for a second, then turned and sat next to her sister. She inched back and leaned against a wall. Calista curled right up on Nelle’s lap as Nelle covered her up.
This was a perfect TV show moment for Nelle to give an important big sister speech. Maybe tell Calista to cut back on the drinking. Definitely tell Calista to stop snorting cocaine like it was fresh oxygen. Maybe question Calista about other tiny baggies of stuff Nelle accidentally found in the bathroom.
Nelle hated the idea that her only living sister could possibly be considered a junkie , but it didn’t surprise her. Nelle could also give Calista a speech about keeping her legs closed. No judgement. Sex was amazing— even though poor Nelle hadn’t been touched by a man in over a year.
Thinking that suddenly had Nelle’s mind running a little crazy for a second or two. Of all people to think about, she thought about that biker. The one from the cemetery. Only because there was a really good chance those bikers caused the shooting…
“It’s not them , is it?” Calista asked.
She turned her head and looked up at her sister. Nelle saw her sister as a little girl again. A young girl wanting to know why life was so hard and messy, even though on the outside it looked so perfect.
They had a handsome father. He had three beautiful daughters. They lived in a huge house. They were essentially rich in many ways. Yet all three sisters lived in an awful version of hell.
“Nelle,” Calista whispered, her voice crackling.
I have to lie to her, Nelle thought.
Nelle shook her head. “Can’t be them . You know I’d never let that happen.”
“But you know how our father is… what he would do…”
“He doesn’t know where we are, Calista. Nobody does. That’s why we live the way we do.”
“I think I’m going to run away with a rock star. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” Nelle said. “You rock out with your who-haw out.”
“You really have to stop saying that word,” Calista said. “Makes you sound so innocent. That’s why guys don’t want to fuck you.”
“Wow. Really?”
“I can sense it. I can almost smell it. You need to get laid, sister.”
“I’ll put it on my list of things to do.”
Nelle stroked Calista’s hair. It took seconds for Calista to fall right asleep.
Nelle sat there, back against the wall, her only living sister now asleep on her lap. She blinked fast and felt a stray tear or two roll from her eye and down her right cheek. It was a fucked up life to live.
The worst thought going through Nelle’s mind? She wished, hoped, and needed more than anything else right now to know that her sister had been killed by mistake because of something to do with the bikers. Because if Thalia was killed on purpose… planned… premeditated… tracked down… murdered…
That meant Calista was next to die.
Nelle said goodbye the only way she knew how—leaving without actually saying goodbye. Early morning came and she slipped out of her sister’s apartment with a note left on the coffee table.
Love you. Call if you need anything.
That was the best Nelle had to offer. Lingering around town, wondering and worrying would get her nowhere. And watching Calista drink and snort cocaine would only break her heart even more.
The hour-long drive back to the no name town to the no name antique store gave Nelle more than enough time to cry. She also spent a good portion checking her mirrors, making sure nobody followed her.
Just put it behind you, she thought to herself. Just leave it all behind, like so many times before.
Yet there was another voice in her head, way in the back of her mind that kept screaming.
Thalia is dead! Thalia was shot to death! With a gun! Bullets… think about it. BULLETS. Bullets tearing through her shirt and her skin. Into her chest. Ripping her flesh open, seeking muscle, veins, arteries, and organs. Her sweet heart exploding…
At one point Nelle had to pull over. Only ten minutes from home but Nelle had no choice. Her stomach said so.
As she opened the driver’s side door, she leaned to her left and began to vomit. The ache in her stomach went up to her heart and her head. The vomiting stopped but the tears and emotion could no longer be held back.
She fell from the car and ended up on her hands and knees on the side of a desolate road, crying her eyes out. Gasping for breaths. Her hands curling tight around jagged rocks that dug into her skin like broken glass. She threw her head back and screamed as hard as she could, as long as she could.
Growing up in such a fake world and knowing violence was the cost of any wrong step… and now little Thalia was gone. Dead. Cremated. Never to exist again. Yet in some fucked up way, Thalia escaped it. For good.
After a few minutes, Nelle climbed to her feet and took her shirt off. She wiped her face and her mouth, cleaning herself up the best she could. She then balled the shirt up tight and threw it off into the distance.
Nelle stood in a bra, on the side of the road, next to her car. She looked down at herself, watching her breasts rise and fall with her breaths. A smile broke out on her face.
I’m wearing a sexy, black laced bra right now, she thought to herself. For who? Huh? Who? Who is going to see me? Who is going to want this…?
Nelle opened the back door to her car and unzipped a bag to get a fresh T-shirt. She also found an old pack of gum and tossed a piece of the fake minty snack into her mouth to chase away that awful vomit taste.
When she arrived back home , she went right to the antique store. She found a small, half dead bouquet of flowers on what was supposed to be the register counter.
There hadn’t been an actual person to walk through the store in years, if not more. That was a big reason why Nelle took the odd job of managing the antique store. Bucky hated when people walked around the store. They touched things. They picked things up. They never put them back the right way. And most of the cheap fucks came to look and rarely purchased…
Then again, even if someone wanted to buy an item, Bucky would suddenly get scared and say the price was wrong.
The flowers were a sweet gesture from Bucky.A handwritten note rested beside the bouquet.
Sorry to hear of your sister’s passing. Hope you’ll be back online soon.
Maybe in other circumstances this would have been seen as a dickhead move. A passive aggressive note from her boss essentially telling her to get back to work. But it was okay. Nelle needed it. This was her sad version of normalcy.
Sometimes it was better to hide.
Sometimes it was easier to forget.