Authors: Carmen Rodrigues
“It’s okay,” she says. “You’re not in trouble.”
“I know.” I stare at her blankly.
“Do you?” she asks, but we both know this is a rhetorical question. “Look, Jess, you’re doing a fantastic job given the circumstances, but you’re so quiet in class. You used to talk before . . .”
The dot-dot-dot is standard speak around me now. When your very popular sister has accidentally overdosed and unenrolled from school, people tend to ask you questions with the dot-dot-dot attached. So the silence that follows isn’t as uncomfortable for me as it is for Mrs. Medina.
“Jessie, I’m worried about you.” She presses a hand to her neck and pauses to consider her words. “Maybe I should have a conversation with your mom—”
“No! Please, Mrs. Medina, don’t.”
Mrs. Medina raises her eyebrows. I’ve never exclaimed anything to her before.
“It’s just my mom . . .” I stop to take a deep breath. “My mom’s going through a lot, and I don’t want her to worry.”
This is true. Lately, Mom’s hands are more nervous than ever. I want to take them into my own and say,
Please just be still.
But I know that won’t help. So I try hard not to add to her stress, by being extra careful with my responsibilities at home and at school.
“But what are
you
going through?” Mrs. Medina says. The
question seems obvious, but she’s the first to ask it since everything fell apart.
“I’m fine.” I slip my eyes downward, toward the crumpled paper. I wonder if it is a love note someone dropped by mistake or a blank sheet discarded only because it was torn. The latter possibility seems unbearable.
Mrs. Medina’s hand slides forward like she’s reaching for me.
“I’m fine,” I repeat, and her hand slides back. She sets it on her hip and waits. I wait too.
Finally, she says, “Okay, Jess. If that’s how you really feel . . .”
It takes some doing, but I give her the confidence stare, the one that makes teachers believe you know the answer to any question they might ask. In return Mrs. Medina offers a kind but concerned smile. She says, “Okay, Jess, you can go for now.”
At her door she hands me a hall pass and sighs. I carry the weight of her breath for a long while.
BEFORE. JULY.
I didn’t understand what Meg was saying when she burst into my bedroom, shouting. I just knew that Meg was being Meg and I was being me.
Meg was eleven, slightly tomboyish, and happy to fight
about everything from sparkly stickers to bike horns. My mom often called her “the little shouter,” and it wasn’t unusual for her to fly into a room, excited about something.
It was Saturday, which according to Lola was pedicure day, and even with the sudden disruption her steady fingers still moved swiftly across her toes. “Meg, just go and play with your Barbies, okay?” she murmured, without looking up.
“I don’t play with Barbies,” Meg said, but the whole Barbie world set up in the corner of our basement said otherwise.
“God, do something about this already, Jess.” Lola gave me a look that usually meant that I had done something wrong, even if that something was not doing anything at all.
“Come on, Meg.” I picked up a pillow and tossed it lightly at her head.
“Hey!” She dodged the pillow, a hurt expression spreading across her face. “It’s my house too!”
“But not your room,” Lola said.
“Fine. I’ll just go watch Sarah
make out
with Tommy by myself, then.”
There was a bit of silence. It was the first time either of us had heard about Sarah and Tommy. I glanced at Lola. She looked as shocked as I felt. Meg, guessing she had revealed a really juicy secret, let her smile grow until it covered half her face.
Lola spoke first. Her voice sounded almost calm, but I could hear the underlying tremble. “You’re lying.”
Meg’s smile faltered. “No, I’m not.”
Lola shot off the bed and partly waddled, partly hopped over to Meg. “You’re lying!” she said again. Meg took a step back, her entire body shrinking inward.
“I—I’m not,” she stammered. “I’m not.” She looked to me, then back to Lola, her mouth hanging partially open.
Lola snapped her fingers in front of Meg’s face. “Details.
Now
.”
Meg took a deep breath and began to tell us a complicated story about playing hide-and-go-seek with some of the neighborhood kids. Lola interrupted her and said, “Just get to the end.”
“Well,” Meg said, “I hid behind the cottage, and that’s when I heard Sarah’s voice, and . . .” She paused to catch her breath. “She and Tommy were totally in his room, making out!”
“Fuck me!” Lola said, and Meg’s eyes grew wide. We weren’t allowed to curse in the house or anywhere else.
“You can’t say those words,” Meg said. “Jess, tell her she can’t say that.”
Lola tore the cotton balls from between her toes, shoved her flip-flops on, and waved her arms at me impatiently. “What are you waiting for, Jess?”
I was waiting for her common sense to kick in, but I didn’t
say that. Instead I said, “No, thanks,” and looked back at my feet.
“You’re going,” she said.
“Nope. Sarah can make out with Tommy even if he is disgusting,” I told her. “We can’t just spy on them.”
She gave me an intense look I couldn’t quite read, grabbed my flip-flops, and shoved them into my hands. “You’re going.”
Once we got outside, Lola stopped in front of Jake’s house and said, “We can just go through that side gate.” She pointed to a path on the left side of the house and squared her shoulders like she was preparing for battle.
“Honestly, I don’t get why this is such a big deal to you.”
“Just come on,” she said, and started toward the path, but I held steady. A second later, Meg was standing beside me.
“I want to come!” She tugged at her jeans, which had ridden up on her thighs so that her ankles stuck out awkwardly. I felt bad for her. Eleven was one of those ages where you were caught between so many phases. You were too young to stay up late, but old enough to get your period. You had to wear bras, even though you barely had boobs. And boys wanted to kiss you, not because they liked you, but because someone dared them to. But the worst part about being eleven was realizing that your older sister, the person you always considered your best friend, wasn’t even your friend at all.
Lola turned back, her eyes narrowing at Meg. “Effing A, Meg. Go home. You’re too young for this shit.”
“I’m only four years younger than you guys,” Meg protested.
“Oh, God. Jess,
please
.” Lola raised her arms in frustration.
“Meg,” I said, ignoring her pleading look, “you have to go.”
But Meg didn’t budge, and I admired her for her toughness.
“Look at this shit,” Lola muttered. She crossed toward Meg and barked meanly into her face, “Go home, you little squirt!”
Meg’s eyes filled with tears. “Jess?”
I remembered the day Sarah threw me over in favor of Ellie, but I told myself that this wasn’t like that. That I was sending Meg home to protect her from whatever Lola was dragging me into.
“Go on, Meg,” I said.
Meg looked from Lola to me, her chin shaking. Then she turned on her heel, her awkward ankles slowly carrying her home.
Lola grabbed my arm, but I yanked it away from her. “Just wait,” I said, keeping my eyes on Meg until our front door shut behind her. Then I turned to Lola and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
What d
o
y
o
u tell me? What d
o
I tell y
o
u? I feel like there are s
o
many things I can’t tell y
o
u. Are there things y
o
u can’t tell me? D
o
y
o
u kn
o
w wh
o
y
o
ur father is? D
o
y
o
u want t
o
kn
o
w?
I kn
o
w wh
o
my father is,
b
ut I d
o
n’t
kn
o
w
him at all.
FIVE YEARS BEFORE.
“Aren’t you happy we came?” Ellie asked me the night of my party. Everyone else had gone home, but Ellie stayed behind to help me clean up. Afterward, we sat on the concrete floor in the middle of my basement, the disco ball spinning fluorescent colors above us. “They worship Jake, you know. It’s ridiculous,” she said. She rolled up her jeans so that her ankle was exposed, and pulled off a Band-Aid, picking at the scab beneath.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Then why pick at it?”
She shrugged and ripped off a big chunk of the scab, exposing a round patch of puckered pink flesh. A surprising amount
of blood started to seep out. She watched for a second, almost fascinated, and then asked for a tissue.
I returned quickly from the bathroom with a wad of toilet paper, which she pressed over the wound. “We should do something for your birthday tomorrow, even if you can’t have a party,” I said.
She laughed. “We just did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your party,” she said. “It was my party too. Why do you think so many people showed up? And did you check out all the gifts I got?”
I stared at Ellie, wondering if she might be a little crazy. The evidence was stacked against her: She picked at scabs until they bled, kicked or nudged you whenever she felt like it, and apparently made up impossible stories. “I invited everyone that came tonight,” I said slowly, before it clicked in that a good number of people I hadn’t invited had also shown up. I stood up and crossed to the gift table. I picked up several gifts and flipped open the gift tabs. All but one were addressed to Ellie. “But how did you know who I invited?”
Ellie looked from the disco ball to me. “Tori and Vanessa told me. We’re kind of best friends . . . except lately, I think they’re totally boring.” She smiled. “Nobody was coming to your party until I said we were having a joint party—”
“But you didn’t even know I was having a party . . .” I felt a knot twist in my stomach.
“Vanessa told me weeks ago. I never said I didn’t know about your party—”
“But you asked if I was having one—”
“But I never said I didn’t
know
what your answer would be.”
“It’s the same thing,” I protested.
“No, it’s not. Anyway . . .” She smiled triumphantly. “I fixed it. So it’s no big deal.”
I was silent. I couldn’t decide how I felt: embarrassed that nobody had wanted to come to my party; mad that Ellie had tricked me into believing she was some poor girl just like me, desperate to be included; or—this somehow felt like the worst possibility—grateful that her deception had prevented my total humiliation.
“Hey,” Ellie said. “I was just trying to help out. You’re not mad or anything, right?” Her droopy eyes were slightly watery again.
The truth was, I wanted to be friends with her. She was unpredictable, popular, Jake’s sister. All very good things. But I still felt like I needed some loophole to act okay with what she had done. “Were you really just trying to help me?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Ellie said, with zero hesitation. “Totally.”
“Then no . . . I’m not mad.”
Ellie smiled, her watery eyes suddenly dry. She lifted her hand, extending her pinky with a grand gesture. “So, friends?”
I let her finger slip into mine. And when she gave it a hard twist, the disco lights casting a shadow across our linked hands, I pushed all doubt aside and said, “Friends.”
Y
o
ur Christmas card, the
o
ne with that cheerful picture
o
f y
o
u with your family l
o
unging
b
eneath a palm tree.
Did y
o
u n
o
tice h
o
w much y
o
ur little girl l
oo
ks like me?
It’s pr
oo
f, d
o
n’t y
o
u think?
That n
o
thing
b
etween us is sacred, n
o
t even the m
o
st invisi
b
le lines.
AFTER. FEBRUARY.
Amber comes to my dorm room with her long hair in pigtails and boots on her feet. She doesn’t say hello or wait to be invited in. She simply sways on by. When I turn around, she’s leaning against my window, staring at me.
She says, “I haven’t seen you in a while, kiddo. You never returned my texts, and Janie says you haven’t been to lit class in weeks . . .”
I haven’t seen Amber since Ellie died. But I do vaguely recall the texts and e-mails she sent in December, a drunk-dial voice mail on New Year’s Eve, a Post-it note stuck on my door in January. “Who the fuck is Janie?” I ask.