Don't Fail Me Now (22 page)

I look over at the odometer. It's at 99,998. But then, like the slow rise of a cruel, discreet middle finger meant only for me, it clicks over to 99,999. And stops.

That's when I start to scream.

Tuesday Afternoon

Kingman, AZ

It tears out of me like it's been waiting in the wings for years, perfectly formed, this long, loud, ragged yell that goes and goes until my vocal chords give out and the muscles in my neck start to shake. I slam my palms against the steering wheel, the thin, hard band digging into my skin, making it sting. Good. I want it to hurt. I hit it again, closefisted this time, and a flare of sharp pain shoots through my knuckles.

“Michelle,” Tim says, and I feel his fingers encircle my right wrist, holding it back. But he can't reach the left. I slam it into the steering wheel a few more times, hitting the horn, producing a series of staccato honks. “Michelle,
stop
. You'll just break something.”

“What's left to break?” I yell, jerking my hand out of his grasp. I feel a weird, dead calm settling in as the adrenaline drains from my limbs. I'm used to panic. I'm used to the swells of anxiety that turn my breath quick and shallow, that turn my pulse into a surround sound marching band, that dry my throat and dilate my pupils. I've lived with it as long as I can remember—fight or flight, every second of every day. This is different. I just feel . . . done.

“You need to relax,” Cass says, looking at me like I'm insane.

“That's easy for you to say.” I drop my throbbing hands into my lap. “You don't even know how easy you have it. You don't have to take care of anything or anyone but yourself.” The next sentence comes out before I can stop it, a series of bullets at pointblank range: “And you can't even do that.” I turn to face her, my voice rising to a shout. “How could you do that to yourself? I'm doing this,
all
of this, for
you
.”

Cass's mouth screws up, and she looks away, out the window. There's nothing but mesas and dying brown grass as far as the eye can see. We're in the middle of nowhere, a metaphorical destiny we've finally managed to make literal.

“Stop it,” Leah says, putting an arm around a terrified-looking Denny. “It's not about you.”

“Oh, what, did she tell you?” I ask angrily. “In the bathroom, when she was stabbing herself with all those needles, did you guys have a bonding moment?” Leah looks like she just got slapped, and Cass starts to cry.

“
Michelle
,” Tim snaps, and I feel a wave of guilt, but I'm too worked up to let it go.

“She was
there
,” I say, slamming the steering wheel again. “She was right there.”

“Don't blame Leah,” he says. “That's totally out of line, and you know it.”

“I can't take this,” I say to no one in particular.

“Why don't you ask her what happened instead of
yelling
at her?” Leah says, leaning forward in her seat, her cheeks getting red.

“Stop fighting!” Denny cries. “Max wants you to stop fighting!”

“Max can shut the hell up,” I snap. “And it's none of your business,” I say to Leah.

“It is my business!” She shouts. “She's my sister, too!”

Another semi wails by just inches away, making me flinch. In the back, both Denny and Cass are sniffling. I remember when Mom and Buck would fight right here, in these same seats, trading bitter accusations and hurling threats back and forth, screaming at each other to shut up and at me to stop crying. The arguments always died down as quickly as they escalated, but that was almost scarier; it made the whole world seem frighteningly off-kilter, something that could shift under your feet and topple you at any second.

Now I'm passing on that feeling, sowing the seeds my parents gave me, and my anger is immediately replaced by a crushing shame.

“I'm sorry,” I say, first to Cass and then to Leah, to Tim, to Denny. “I'm so sorry.” I check to make sure I'm not about to get sideswiped by a Mack truck, and then I get out of the car and start to walk along the shoulder.
I give up
, I tell the universe, kicking the guardrail for emphasis.
I'm taking the hint
. Hopefully there's enough cell reception on this stretch of highway for Tim to call his dad and get him to change plans and
pick us up here—if any of the Harpers are even willing to associate with me anymore.

“Hey!” I look over my shoulder to see Cass slamming her door shut and starting after me. “Where are you going?”

“Get on the other side of the rail!” I yell as a line of cars shoot past.

“
You
get on the other side.”

She has a point. I jump over the low metal fence and into a circle of grass. We're at a bend in the road now, which creates a shallow little meadow for a few yards before the ground swells into a hill. We meet in the center.

“Where are you going?” Cass asks.

“I don't know,” I say. Wind from a passing truck whips my curls across my face, and I bat them out of the way.

“Well, wait.”

“For what?” I cross my arms. “A cartoon anvil to drop out of the sky?”

Cass shoves her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. “For me.”

“You think I would leave you? Now?” I cry. “I would
never
leave you behind. You're all I've got, Cass. That's why when you—” I have to close my eyes for a few seconds and will the tears away. When I open them again, Cass is wet-eyed, too. “I've never been that scared,” I say.

“Me neither.” She always looks small in her oversize clothes, but right now I can see back a decade, to the little girl clinging to her mother's legs, squeezing her brown eyes tight, trying not to be seen. “And I'm sorry,” she says. “I did think about you. And Denny. It just . . . wasn't enough.” I know she doesn't mean that to sting, and I try not to show that it does. I sit down in the grass and lean back on my elbows. If I tilt my chin up I
can't see the road, and with the sun beating down on my face it almost feels like I'm back in our yard. When it gets really brutal in the summer, we all set up back there on towels, even Mom sometimes. The crabapple is somehow still alive, so we have to clear away the rotten fruit first, but all we really need is some lemonade and a radio to make a day of it.

“Can you tell me why?” I ask. Cass drops down next to me, and a little black zippered case I didn't notice she was holding falls to the ground between her knees. It's the new insulin kit from the hospital. I made Tim hide it in the glove compartment. She catches me looking at it and blanches.

“I was bringing it so you could . . .” She picks up the case and lobs it at me like a live grenade. “I wasn't going to . . .”

“Do you want to, though?” I ask. “Still?”

“I mean, not right this minute,” Cass says. “I feel a little better.”

“Good.” I turn the case over in my hands. She'll still have to do shots for the rest of her life. I wonder if she'll think about it every single time. I know I will.

“It wasn't one specific thing,” she says after a minute. “It was a lot of stuff.”

“Mom,” I say.

“That didn't help.”

“No, I was going to say I talked to her. A few days ago.”

Cass frowns and chews on her lower lip. “Was she mad?”

“No,” I say. “She was just scared and sad. Kind of all over the place, like normal.” When Cass won't meet my eyes, I put my hand on her knee and shake it gently. “She's mad at
me
, and Buck. But not you. Nobody's mad at you.”

She gets quiet for a minute and drops her elbows to her knees, then her chin to her elbows, folding in like one of those Jacob's ladder toys. We have one at home that Mom got from church as a kid. Apparently they were allowed to play with them at Sunday school because of the biblical reference, but there's not much you can do with a staircase to heaven that doesn't actually go anywhere.

“It's one thing to not have Buck. Or even Mom sometimes. But if we got split up . . .” She shakes her head, picking at the grass.

“That's not going to happen,” I say. “If Mom slips up again, I'll file for custody myself.”

Cass looks up at me, surprised and a little bit suspicious. “But then you'd be stuck with us. Like, for life.”

I'll admit, I haven't thought the legal guardian thing through yet—and I hope I never have to. But after this week, staying in Baltimore for a few more years doesn't sound so bad anymore. Seeing some of the rest of the country has been cool, but no place has felt quite like home. Just call me Dorothy Gale, I guess.

“I'm already stuck with you for life,” I say to Cass. “You'll never get rid of me.”

“What about school, though?”

“I can take night classes or put it off for a year or two.” If I take that assistant manager gig—if Yvonne will still give it to me—I could probably pay my way through the University of Maryland without too much aid. They have a great law school, actually. I could up and do a one-eighty on the family business. Who knows? “And I'm serious about getting you into a new school, too,” I say. “If you want.”

“Maybe,” Cass says. “It's not going so great.”

“I know.” I take a breath, trying to tread carefully. “While you were in the hospital . . . I read some of your texts.”

“Oh.” She doesn't look angry, exactly. More hurt.

“I'm really sorry, I was just so worried.”

Cass blinks nervously. “It's okay.”

“So . . . you and Erica aren't talking anymore?” I ask gently.

“Nope.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“There's not much to talk about,” Cass says with a far-off look. “I liked her, and she didn't like me. Not in the same way, anyway.” She lets out a shaky breath. “I'm glad you know,” she says. “It's kind of a relief.”

“I love you no matter what,” I say. “And someday I know you'll meet someone who loves you like I do, for exactly who you are. Don't settle for anything less.”

Cass nods, but there's a vacant, sort of despairing look on her face. I recognize it—it's the same feeling I get whenever I think about falling in love. Because what if he wants to get married someday? Love is one thing, but marriage is something else completely, something murkier and infinitely more frightening. Marriage, to us, means Madison and Buck. It means an electrical storm that burns everything in its path.

“I'm scared to see him,” Cass says, as if reading my mind. “I don't remember him at all. Not a smell, not a mental picture, nothing.”

“It's probably for the best,” I say.

“Not for me.” Her brows knit together, pain flashing in her eyes. “I'm jealous you knew him. I don't want to be, but I am. It's always been like he's
your
dad, not mine.”

“He's just as much yours . . .” I say, trailing off, the modifier
unfortunately
dangling on my lips. I'm not sure where Cass is going with this, and I don't want to say the wrong thing. She's opening up more now than she has in years.

“But I got used to it with you,” she says. “And it was just our ages, it wasn't like he
chose
you.” Her eyes well up, and she covers them with her fists. And then I realize what she means.

“Leah,” I say.

“He was already cheating,” Cass says, choking out the words, gasping for breath in between. “He could have just kept doing that. She was already born. It wasn't until
me
that he left.”

“No,” I say, putting a hand on her back. I'm tentative at first, bracing for her to shrug me off, but the resistance never comes. I fold her into my arms like when we were young and she would hop into my lap for stories. “It wasn't you,” I murmur into her cheek.

“Then what?”

“He's just a piece of shit, Cass. I wish there was a reason that would make it make sense, but there isn't.
He's
the reason. He makes bad decisions and hurts people. That's why we don't have a dad. Not because of you. And not because of Leah.”

Slowly, my sister's sobs get quieter, punctuated by loud sniffing and nose wiping.

“The worst part,” Cass finally says, “is I kind of like her.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.” The whine of an airplane fills the sky overhead. If the Harpers come through on their promise,
we'll be on one in a matter of days. Our first time flying. I haven't even had a chance to wonder if it scares me. Life on the ground has been scary enough.

We sit side by side looking out at the cars for a while, and then Cass lifts up the bottom of her sweatshirt. “It's time,” she says. “Will you do it?”

I unzip the black case and take out the bottle of cloudy medicine, rolling it between my palms. “It's been forever,” I say. I tear open an alcohol wipe and clean my fingers, then use it to swab Cass's side—what would be a love handle if she had any fat on her.

“I liked when you did it,” she says. “You'd do the funny voices and everything.”

I take the cap off a needle and pull back the plunger to fill it with air to the right dosage line. It's true, I used to make the needles talk, pretending they just wanted to give Cass a kiss, unaware of their own sharpness. It made her laugh, at least until the actual puncture.

“So, is it true about you and Tim?” she asks as I insert the needle into the bottle and turn it upside down. I give her a look. “Denny told me,” she says. “He said you were hugging a lot.”

“I don't know if there is a me and Tim,” I sigh, filling up the syringe. “It's weird. He's my half sister's brother.”

“
Step
brother.”

“Still, it's not exactly a story I'd want to tell my grandkids.”

She doesn't even wince at the injection. “I think he's nice,” she says, with the needle still in. “He sat with me awhile the other day. He taught me how to harmonize.”