Blood Sisters
Marilyn said the garden shed near her backyard would be the best place. Afterschool, we dropped our backpacks on her front stoop and sprinted across her yard. We ducked into the trees and followed a narrow path through the woods. The light filtered down in thin lines and dampness clung to my skin. The ground felt soft here, like running on a mattress of pine needles. I’d never gone that far, but Marilyn glided through the forest like a doe. Behind us, her house grew smaller and smaller until I could no longer see it through the density of trees. I nearly tripped on an old wheelbarrow, its small tire sad and flat, blending into the duff.
“Slow down,” I said. “Marilyn.” She turned to look at me, then kept on running.
After a few minutes, I saw the shed. It looked like a place we were never supposed to go. Ivy stretched over the edge of the collapsed tin roof, green tendrils reaching through a broken window. Cobwebs criss-crossed the gutters and a pile of shredded tarps lay half-buried under old tools. Everything smelled like battery acid and rust.
“Over here,” she said. I watched her step into a circle of sunlight that shone through a clearing in the trees above. We sat on the ground, knee to knee, and Marilyn drew a thick quilting needle from her coat pocket.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“From Home Ec,” she said, “when Mrs. Roberts wasn’t looking.” The needle glinted in the light. “You have to promise,” she said. “It’s the only thing that will make it real.”
I closed my eyes and laid my hand into her lap, just like we’d practiced. “I promise,” I said.
I felt her pinch my pointer finger at the first knuckle and prod the needle into my skin. The pressure hurt more than the prick and I opened my eyes. It seemed like we waited forever for my blood to well up. When it finally came, it looked like a piece of Red Hots candy; a tiny, swollen orb of blood balancing on the tip of my finger.
“Now, say it,” Marilyn said.
“Tied together forever, tied together forever, tied together forever,” I repeated.
Marilyn released my finger and quickly pricked her own.
“I thought I was supposed to do yours,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter who does it,” she told me. “It matters what we do next.”
Holding our fingertips above our heads, we pressed them together and chanted a soft melody:
Katey Schultz
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