Page 55 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

“Anyway, we pull into the garage, and the whole place smells like the Land of a Million Farts, so I say, ‘Who cut the cheese?’ And then Mom turns around, and she says...”

They had choregraphed their routine years ago. Kevin gestured to his twin.

“It’s not cheese, my little chickadees,” Katie croaked in her scariest wicked-old-witch voice. “There’s something dead overhead. Which one of you is brave enough to go up to the attic and check it out?”

“This is where the dead possum comes in,” Lizzie said.

“Almost,” Katie said. “So I say, ‘Me, me, me. I want to go up there.’ But my wuss brother is too chicken.”

“I wasn’t chicken. I hated the smell.”

“So Mom says, ‘Let’s all go upstairs and see who makes it back alive.’”

“Creepy in some circles,” Lizzie said. “But if you know anything about how your mom and I were raised, that still qualifies as perfectly normal parenting.”

“Anyway, I go up first,” Katie said, “and there it is, all bloated and rotting in the heat, with hundreds of black flies feeding on his carcass.”

“Dead possum,” Lizzie said.

“Roadkill in the attic. Totally gross,” Katie said. “Guess what happened next?”

“You realize, of course, that I’m a doctor,” Lizzie said. “Stifling hot attic, no ventilation, nervous five-year-old boy who just stuffed himself with peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwiches on cinnamon swirl raisin bread, and washed it down with pink lemonade. I’m going to go with little Kevin barfed his brains out.”

“All over little Katie. Big, thick, slimy brown chunks,” Katie said.

“In my defense,” Kevin said, “she was holding up that fuzzy, germ-infested ball of death. What was I supposed to do?”

“Did your mother at least clean you up?” Lizzie said.

“I took a twenty-minute shower. Mom washed my hair twice before I calmed down and twice more before I decided I no longer smelled like vomit and dead possum.”

“Quick doctor question—any emotional scars or PTSD as a result of your horrifying childhood incident?”

Katie shook her head. “No. We’re just regular fucked-up teenagers whose parents are both local luminaries.”

“Were! Not are,” Kevin said. “Theywerelocal luminaries. We’re down to our last luminary.”

“Thank you, Brother Buzzkill,” Katie said. “We’re out of weed, and you just harshed my mellow.”

“Bite me, Katie!”

“Hey!” Lizzie snapped before Katie could counter. “Did I mention that I was a doctor?”

Silence.

“I can write a scrip for this shit.” She pulled a baggie out of her purse and tossed it to Katie. “Here you go, kid. Roll us one for the road.”

THIRTY-TWO

nineteen years before the funeral

“I met this really hot guy,” Lizzie said.

We were having lunch at the White Dog Café on Sansom Street in the heart of the University of Pennsylvania campus. High school was long behind us. I was in my final year at Penn Law, and Lizzie was in her second year at Penn Medical.

“He asked me out,” she said.

A lot of guys asked Lizzie out. She was tall and slender with the body of a ballerina, the winsome face of an Irish farm girl, and the wicked sense of humor of a leprechaun.

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