St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves Read Online Free

miself and brig her to. sory ava i haf the sownd of more words butt i coud not remember the shaps of the letters.
    —ossie robacow

    I have to read the letter three times before I understand that she’s left me for good. My judgment about these things is getting all the time better, and I know that this is not a secret for keeping. “Ossie, don’t go!” I holler. “Wait! I’ll…I’ll stove-pop you some Boos!” Which sounds wincingly inadequate, even to my own ears. What was the thing she was going to do? Eel-up? Earlobe? Elope, I remember. I find Grandpa’s dusty, checkerboard dictionary and check it for clues:

    elope: [v] to run away, or escape privately, from the place or station to which one is bound by duty

    Elope. The word lights up like a bare bulb, swinging long shadows through my brain. Because how exactly do you elope with a ghost? What if Luscious is taking my sister somewhere I can’t follow? What if she has to be a ghost, too, to get there? And then another horror occurs to me: What if it’s the Bird Man she’s been meeting all along?
    You’d think I’d start after her right away, but I do not. I put on my rain boots, and then take them off, and then put them on again. I pick up the telephone to call for help, and then drop it back into the receiver, jumping at the blank hum of the dial tone. I try to scream, and only air comes out.
    Outside, I can feel the swamp multiplying, a boundless, leafy darkness. The distant pines look like pale flames. Without the Chief to cordon it off, without the tourists to clap politely and commend it to memory, Swamplandia! has reverted to being a regular old wilderness. If the Bird Man were to show up right now, I would barrel into his arms, so grateful for the human company. Where is the Chief, I howl, and where is my sister? My hand hovers above the doorknob. I stand there, a thin wire of fear spooling in my gut, until I can’t stay in the empty house any longer. And I’d be tempted to tell Ms. Huerta that
this
is the feeling that separates us from the animals, if I hadn’t seen so many of the Chief’s dogs die of loneliness.
    I pack a flashlight and a Wiffle bat and a steak knife and some peanut butter Boos, to lure Ossie back into her body. We don’t have any garlic bulbs, so I bring the cauliflower, and hope that any vampires I encounter will be of the myopic, easily duped variety. And then I open the door, and run.
    The air hits me like a wall, hot and muggy. I run as far as the entrance to the stand of mangrove trees, and stop short. The ground sends out feelers, a vegetable panic. The longer I stand there, the more impossible movement seems.
    And then comes that familiar sound, that raw bellow, pulsing out of the swamp.
    The cubed thing inside me melts into a sudden lick of fear. Something hot-blooded and bad is happening to my sister out there, I am sure of it. And the next thing I know I am on the other side of the trees, crashing towards the fishpond. It’s a sensory blur, all jumps and stumbles—oily sinkholes, buried stumps, salt nettles tearing at my flesh. I run for what feels like a very long time. One wisp of cloud blows out the moon.
    I wish I could say I gulp pure courage as I run, like those brave little girls you read about in stories, the ones who partner up with detective cats. But this burst of speed comes from an older adrenaline, some limbic other. Not courage, but a deeper terror. I don’t want to be left alone. And I am ready to defend Ossie against whatever monster I encounter, ghosts or men or ancient lizards, and save her for myself.
    When I break free of the trees and make for the pond, my whole body primed for fight, there is no visible adversary to wrestle with. The Bellower is not the Bird Man. It’s not a wild gator. It’s my sister, standing stem-naked in the moonlight, her red skirts crumpled around her feet like dead leaves. Osceola, poised over dark water, and singing:
             
    “Cluck! cluck! soul of