XIII. Lisey and Amanda (The Sister Thing)

An excerpt from Stephen King's Lisey's Story

Image stolen from GardenWeb user name Kentuck_8b

Lisey's car was the only car in the parking lot, and the picnic area was deserted-not even a single backpacker getting high on nature (or Montpelier Gold). Amanda walked toward one of the picnic tables. The soles of her feet were very pink, and even with the sun hidden, she was clearly nude under the green pajamas.

"Amanda, do you really think that's-"

"If anyone comes I'll nip right back into the car." Manda looked back over her shoulder and flashed a grin. "Try it-the grass feels positively slinky."

Lisey walked to the edge of the pavement on the balls of her feet, then stepped up into the green. Amanda was right, slinky was the one, the perfect fish from Scott's pool of words. And the view to the west was a straight shot to the eye and the heart. Thunderheads were pouring toward them through the ragged teeth of the White Mountains, and Lisey counted seven dark spot where the high slopes had been smudged away by cauls of rain. Brilliant lightnings flashed inside those stormbags and between two of them, connecting them like some fantastic fairy bridge, was a double rainbow that arched over Mount Cranmore in a frayed loophole of blue. As Lisey watched that hole closed and another, over some mountain whose name she did not know, opened, and the rainbow reappeared. Below them Castle Lake was a dirty dark gray and Little Kin Pond beyond it a dead black goose-eye. The wind was rising but it was improbably warm, and when her hair lifted from her temples, Lisey lifted her arms as though she would fly-not on a magic carpet but on the ordinary alchemy of a summer storm.

"Manda!" she said. "I'm glad I'm alive!"

"So am I," Amanda said seriously, and held out her hands. The wind blew back her graying hair and made it fly like a child's. Lisey closed her fingers carefully around her sister's, trying to be mindful of Amanda's cuts but aware of a rising wildness in herself all the same. Thunder cracked overhead, the warm wind blew harder, and ninety miles to the west, thunderheads streamed through the ancient mountain passes. Amanda began to dance and Lisey danced with her, their bare feet in the grass, their linked hands in the sky.

"Yes!" Thunder cracked and Lisey had to yell it.

"Yes, what?" Manda hollered back. She was laughing again.

"Yes, I mean to kill him!"

"That's what I said! I'll help you!" Amanda shouted, and then the rain began and they ran back to the car, both of them laughing and holding their hands over their heads.