everyone dated the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the lisbon girls people saw their clairvoyance in the wiped out elms and the harsh sunlight some thought the tortures tearing the lisbon girls pointed to a simple refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them so full of flaws but the only thing we are certain of after all these years is the insufficiency of explanation the lisbon girls were thirteen cecilia fourteen lux fifteen bonnie sixteen mary and seventeen therese no one could understand how mrs lisbon and mr lisbon our math teacher had produced such beautiful creatures from that time on the lisbon house began to change almost everyday and even when she wasn t keeping an eye on cecilia lux would suntan on a towel wearing a swimsuit that caused the knife sharpener to give her a 15 minute demonstration for free the only reliable boy who got to know lux was trip fontaine who only 18 months before the suicides had emerged from baby fat to the delight of girls and mothers alike but few anticipated it would be so drastic the girls were pulled out of school and mrs lisbon shut the house in maximum security isolation the girls only contact with the outside world was through the catalogs they ordered that started to fill the lisbon s mailbox with pictures of high end fashions and brochures for exotic vacations unable to go anywhere the girls traveled in their imaginations to gold tipped siamese temples or past an old man with a leaf broom tiding a moss carpeted speck of japan and cecilia hadn t died she was a bride in calcutta collecting everything we could of theirs we couldn t get the lisbon girls out of our minds but they were slipping away the colours of their eyes were fading along with exact locations of moles and dimples from five they had become four and they were all living in the dead becoming shadows we would have lost them completely if the girls hadn t contacted us lux was the last to go fleeing from the house we had forgot to stop at the garage after the suicide free for all mr and mrs lisbon gave up any attempt to lead a normal life they had mr hedly pack up the house selling what furniture he could in a garage sale everyone went just to look our parents did not buy used furniture and they certainly didn t buy furniture tainted by death we of course took the family photos that were put out with the trash mr lisbon put the house on the market and it was sold to a young couple from boston it didn t matter in the end how old they had been or that they were girls but only that we had loved them and they hadn t heard us calling still do not hear us calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time alone in suicide which is deeper then death and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together