Bitch Factor Read Free Page A

to look at her inside the box. Courtney wanted to yell, “Go away! She’s our sister. We want to be alone with her.” Of course, she’d never do that.
    “COURTNEY, I WANT TO SEE BETSY!”
    Oh, fuck, Ellie , now you’ve done it .
    But it wasn’t as bad as she expected. Only half the people in the room turned to look at them. Mama, surrounded by a knot of ladies, hadn’t even heard, and Daddy Travis was outside smoking with some men.
    Courtney straightened her shoulders, clasped Ellie’s hand tighter, and started toward the coffin. Actually, Ellie had been pulling her toward the coffin all along; now Courtney stopped resisting. Too bad Ellie wasn’t the oldest. Ellie loved to STAND OUT.
    Courtney avoided looking inside the box until she stood right beside it. She had never seen a dead person before, except on TV, of course, which didn’t count because everybody knew the actors weren’t really dead. She’d had a cat once that died. The cat didn’t look any different, except it gotstiff. But one time Mama ran over a dog—Mama didn’t mean to, it darted right in front of her car—and the dog looked really gross, its head all mashed and bloody.
    Mama said Betsy was run over by a car.
    “Courtney, I can’t SEE!”
    “Okay, Ellie, I’ll pick you up, but be quiet.”
    First, she had to make sure it wasn’t too gross. She didn’t want Ellie having nightmares about her own sister. She peeked real quick—and it wasn’t gross at all.
    But it wasn’t really Betsy, either. More like a doll made to look like Betsy.
    “COURTNEY…”
    She picked Ellie up, and they stood looking at the Betsy doll in the coffin.
    “Can Betsy come home now?”
    “No, she can’t come home,” Courtney whispered. Now that she had finally made herself look, she couldn’t seem to stop looking. Was Betsy really in there? Or was this a big dumb doll someone had made to fake them out? And why the fuck had Mama made Betsy wear that pink dress?
    Betsy hated that dress. She’d have wanted the purple shirt.
    Hot tears crowded behind Courtney’s eyes, threatening to spill over. She blinked hard, willing them to BACK OFF. Betsy would hate knowing her sister was standing here blubbering over her.
    “Betsy’s sleeping, Courtney. Wake her up.”
    “I can’t wake her up, Ellie.”
    “I can wake her!” Ellie lunged toward the doll in the box.
    Courtney pulled away in time to keep Ellie from smacking the doll’s face, but Ellie grabbed the side of the coffin and held on.
    “BETSY, WAKE UP. LET’S GO HOME.”
    A man appeared instantly beside them.
    “Now, now, child. Elizabeth doesn’t want to wake up just now. Let’s let her rest awhile longer.” His voice was low and friendly, but firm. The man loosened Ellie’s fingers andturned the girls toward a larger room with fewer people and more chairs.
    Courtney had never seen the man before. He wore a black suit and looked like part of the furniture. She was glad he came along when he did. A few minutes later, she and Ellie were seated, each with a cinnamon sugar cookie and a plastic cup half filled with syrupy red punch.
    “Will Betsy ever come home?” Ellie’s voice sounded smaller.
    “No.” The doll in the box was not Betsy. Courtney didn’t know whether she believed in heaven, but she knew Betsy was someplace good, because even when she was too damn bossy she was a good sister.
    Courtney scooted her chair closer to Ellie’s. Ever since Betsy’s… accident… she hadn’t let Ellie get too far away. “Bad things always come in threes” Mrs. Witherspoon had once said. Betsy getting killed was the first really bad thing that ever happened to them. A part of Courtney felt sure that what Mrs. Witherspoon said was only superstition, like “seven years bad luck” when you broke a mirror, but another part of her had squeezed down around a terrible feeling that Mrs. Witherspoon might be right.
    Daddy Jon, who was Ellie’s real daddy but not Courtney’s or Betsy’s, had said all