Don't Fail Me Now (7 page)

I briefly consider lying, but my brain is too fried. “That's her,” I say.

“Her who?” I give Cass a look and watch as the realization tenses her features one by one: the full lips thinning, the small
nose scrunching, the straight eyebrows knitting together into a shallow
V
. She squints at the screen. “
That's
her?”

“Yup.”

“Damn,” Cass says, “I always pictured her as more Willow Smith than Taylor Swift.”

“Me too.”

“How'd you find her?” Cass asks, shaking her head, clicking through the photos. “I thought I'd looked at every Devereaux on here.” She looks at me expectantly, and even though I want nothing more than to avoid this conversation, I can't work up the necessary energy.

“She doesn't use it,” I say. “She goes by Harper. Her stepdad's name.”

“Leah Harper,” Cass whispers, and I know her brain is working overtime all of a sudden, struggling to fit a new name and face to the specter we've been building in our heads since we were kids. “How did you figure it out?” she asks, her facial muscles as usual not betraying anything beneath the surface.

“Her brother came in tonight,” I say, rerolling the bills from Yvonne's loan to avoid eye contact. “He was looking for me.”

As if on cue, Cass lands on the photo of Leah and Tim. “Oh yeah, I saw that guy,” she says. “I knew
something
freaked you out. What did he want?”

“Nothing,” I say before I can stop myself. “He was just curious.”

She shoots me a skeptical side-eye. “Come on. Why would he be curious about you?”

“Um, thanks?” I shove her.

“You know what I mean. He's not even related to us. Why would he care?”

“It's . . . complicated,” I hedge.

“
What?
” she asks, getting annoyed.

Cass and I have an amateur telepathy thing going where I can usually communicate basic messages just using my eyes. When we were kids, it was stuff like,
Go upstairs
.
It's okay
.
Don't be scared
. But right now I'm just pleading with her,
Let it go. You don't want to know
.
Trust me
.

“Tell me,” she says.

“Not now, okay?”

“Shut up and just tell me, Michelle,” she says, her voice getting loud. “You're freaking me out!”

“Fine.” I look her straight in the eyes and take a breath. “Buck is dying.”

“Oh,” she says, with the surprise of someone who was expecting a different, much worse, answer. I wonder if she thought something had happened to Leah. Better to lose a confirmed piece-of-shit father than a perfect imaginary sister, I guess. Cass thinks for a few seconds and then asks, “What's he dying of?”

“I don't know.”

“You didn't even
ask
?”

I didn't care
, I want to say, but I don't want to transfer my bitterness over Buck onto my sister. She was only two when he left, so she doesn't even remember him. She basically grew up without a dad, like Denny. I think Buck is a little bit like a cartoon villain to Cass: a one-dimensional bad guy who let us down that time, long ago. But I remember. He was
there
; he was my father—until he wasn't. And I will never, ever forgive him.

“How bad is it?” she asks. “Like . . . how soon is he . . .”

I shrug. “It's enough for me to know he's on his way out,”
I say. “I'm not really sweating the details.” Actually, of course I want to know. I'm kicking myself for being too mad to ask Tim for more information when I had the chance. But Buck clearly didn't care about my life, so I'm trying hard not to let myself care about his death. So far, as evidenced by my recent Google searches, it's not working out so well.

“God, do you know
anything
?” Cass groans.

“I know he's leaving us something,” I say defensively. “I know he's in California.”

“What's he leaving us?
Where
in California?”

“I . . . don't know,” I admit, and Cass rolls her eyes so hard she could knock over a set of bowling pins. “But apparently Leah's having a rough time with it all, and this guy, her brother or stepbrother or whatever, Tim, wants me to go talk to her.”

“Seriously?” Cass asks. “
She's
having a rough time?” My sister stares down at the carpet for a minute and then says, “Cry me a fucking river.”

“Cass—”

“Don't tell me not to curse,” she snaps. “You don't get to play mom right now. Everything's too screwed up.”

I bite my tongue—only figuratively—this time. She has a point. “See, this is why I didn't want to tell you,” I say.

“Are you gonna talk to her?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “Of course not.”

Cass nods and seems to relax a little bit but closes the web browser and shuts the laptop. She shoves her hands back into her hoodie. “I pretend he's dead sometimes,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”

“When I imagine it, he gets shot in a holdup. Like at a liquor store or something.”

“That's kind of violent,” I laugh. In my version, he just sort of evaporates out of existence, kind of like I'm ordering an execution with a pencil eraser instead of a lethal injection.

Cass shrugs. “What other way is there?” she asks.

“I think maybe you've been watching too much
CSI
,” I say. “And we should probably go to sleep before we give ourselves nightmares.” I reach out to hug her, but she swivels out of the way and leaps to her feet.

“He left them, too, right?” Cass asks. The sweatpants pool around her ankles, making her look like she's disappearing into the floor.

“Yes.”

She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and chews on it a minute, visibly relaxing, before letting it go. “Is it bad that that makes me feel better?”

“No.”

“Do you know how long he . . .” She pauses in the doorway and shakes her head. “Never mind.”

“How long he has left? I don't know. Not long, I guess.”

“No,” Cass says. “I was gonna ask how long he stayed. With them.”

“I don't know that either.”

“Forget it,” she says and slips out the door as quickly as she came in.

A few minutes later, after a little more Instagram stalking, I return everything in my aunt's bedroom to the way I found it and then pad down the hall in bare feet, feeling around in the dark for my spot on the floor but finding either warm bodies or sharp pieces of furniture taking up all the prime real estate. So even though I know Sam will find some reason to give me shit
about it, I crawl onto the couch and nestle my still-damp head into the well-worn, tobacco-scented cushions.

He left them, too
.

The thought
is
comforting, although after seeing those pictures, it's a hard scenario to imagine. How did Buck ever fit into, let alone abandon, that happy, normal, magazine-shiny family I just glimpsed? He's the same color, but that's where the similarities seem to end. The Buck I remember, the long-haired, allergic-to-dress-shirts, raucous, laughing, mercurial drunk who drove a car that even in its prime looked like it was destined for a junkyard, could never have posed believably in front of a white picket fence.

Then again, neither could I. Neither could any of us. No matter what shade of sea foam you dressed us in or how you straightened and smoothed out our hair, our untrusting eyes and our closed-mouth smiles would give us away in a second.

We'll never be a part of that kind of family. We'll never be our sister's sisters, not outside of a DNA lab. That fantasy is just a silly game best kept in the past.

Wednesday Morning, Part 1

Baltimore, MD

I wake up unable to breathe and start to panic thinking I'm paralyzed again—it always happens more when I'm stressed; it's actually kind of amazing I'm not in a coma by now—but then Denny peers into my face, and I realize he's straddling my chest like a wrestler, a wriggly, fifty-pound bundle of sharp elbows and knees.

“Max and I are hungry,” he whimpers.

“Then go get some food,” I groan, struggling to push him off with the minimal strength in my sleepy spaghetti arms. “You know how.”

“She doesn't have anything,” he whines, sliding down onto
the tangle of blankets on the floor. “Just some weird cheese and mom juice.” Mom juice. That's what he calls booze.

“Okay, okay.” I sit up and blink into the still-dark room. The thin strip of visible sky outside is peach-colored, and my phone alarm hasn't gone off, so it must be just after sunrise. Aunt Sam's door is shut, but her purse is hanging on the chair by the door, so she must be home. There is one thing conspicuously missing, though. “Where's Cass?” I ask.

“Doing her shot, I think,” Denny says, punching all of the buttons on the remote in an attempt to turn on the TV. A black screen appears with the words
CONNECTION NOT DETECTED
.

I poke around in the cupboards until I find a box of Special K stashed next to an empty carton of cigarettes over the stove. I pour some into a bowl and look for milk, but Denny was right—there's no liquid in the fridge except for a bottle of white wine and a few hard ciders. When I close the door, I notice that Aunt Sam's only magnet reads,
GET
BEHIND ME, SATAN—AND
DON'T PUSH!
Right.

“You'll have to eat this dry,” I say, sticking a spoon into the pile of cereal and setting it in front of him on the coffee table. I grab the remote and fix the input, scrolling until I find a Ninja Turtles cartoon and then lowering the volume until it's barely audible. “We don't want to wake the beast,” I whisper, ruffling his hair.

“But I already woke you up.” Denny grins, flake shards shooting through his lips onto the carpet.

“Smartass.” I flop back down on the couch and check my phone. It's six fifty-five. If we hurry we can probably get out the door before Aunt Sam even remembers we're here. I pull a
rumpled sheet around me (not that Denny would ever take his eyes off a screen, unless—and maybe not even if—the house went up in flames) and shimmy out of my gym shorts and into some jeans. The tank top I slept in has no visible stains and still smells like coconut oil conditioner, so I leave it on. Devereaux rule #6: No stains, no smells, no problem.

I know how scarce and precious private bathroom time is these days, but after ten minutes of folding up the makeshift bedding and playing solitaire on my phone waiting for Cass to emerge, I start to get impatient.

“Hey,” I whisper through the door, drumming my fingers on the hollow, white-painted wood. “You almost ready?” I hear shuffling and the blast of sink faucets. A few seconds later, Cass comes out with a mumbled, “All yours.” Her face is dripping wet, but not enough to distract me from her bloodshot eyes and puffy lids. She's been crying.

I shut myself in and stare at my reflection in the mirror, my self-loathing steadily rising. I should never have let Cass see Leah's photos. I should never have told her about Buck. My sister acts so tough that I sometimes forget how young she is. She's thirteen.
Thirteen
. Her armor's just starting to grow. And she's already been through more than a lot of people twice her age. She has to stick herself with needles just to stay alive, not to mention survive the basic soul-suck of adolescence, which apparently includes some posse of mean girls gay-bashing her at school—and she's not even gay. Or maybe she is. I don't know. Would she even tell me? Either way, on top of all that, she definitely didn't need another thing to worry about.

I wash my face and brush my teeth, but as penance for my
misjudgment I decide to leave my hair in its natural state, which might best be described as “Solange Knowles after falling on an electrified fence.”

I turn to leave the bathroom and come face-to-face with Aunt Sam, the only person I know who can manage to look intimidating in a Hello Kitty kimono.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she says, putting a hand up on the doorframe. “You got something for me?”

“Um . . .” The wad of bills is safe in my bag in the living room, stuffed into a pair of ankle socks. It's all there, and handing it over would make her happy and get her off my back—for the time being, anyway. But for some reason, I can't bring myself to part with my entire life savings just yet. “I got it,” I say, thinking on my feet. “But since I worked late and deposited my paycheck after eight, it won't post until tomorrow.”

“Don't lie,” she says, clicking her tongue. “You think I don't know a liar, you must have forgotten who my sister is.”

Mom lies because she's an addict
, I want to say.
Which is better than being a sad, lonely old bitch like you.
But instead I try to look shocked. “I'm not lying!” I say. “I swear, you can come with me to an ATM right now. I've got it all, $347 and change. We can even go talk to the bank manager and see if they can make an exception.” I crinkle my forehead and swallow hard. If I actually let all the heartache I've been bottling up for the past decade show on my face, I'm afraid I might crack for good, so instead I just give her a fake bootleg version. “Please don't kick us out,” I whisper, pressing my lips together and chattering my teeth to make my chin tremble. “Just give me one more day.”

My aunt purses her lips and steps back, looking me up and down with her hands on her hips. “Fine,” she says finally.
“You're lucky I haven't had my coffee yet.” She sweeps back into her bedroom and kicks the door closed with one slippered foot.

• • •

Today's ride to school is even more chaotic than usual. It takes me three tries to get Goldie to start, and when she does there's a rattling sound that doesn't stop even when I press on the brake. Great. Then when I start to pull out into the street, Denny screams, “STOP!” at the top of his lungs because apparently I have almost run over Max, and I have to resist the urge to shrug and keep going. Then Denny has to get out of his seatbelt to let Max in the car, and
then
Max somehow manages to kick the back of Cass's seat even though he has no legs. (“He does have legs, and he's wearing cowboy boots,” Denny informs us.) Cass, meanwhile, won't look at or speak to any of us. She's even more robotic than usual, and I only last five minutes before I resort to shameless bribery to clear my conscience.

“Who wants a doughnut?” I sing as I veer into the drive-through.

“We do!” Denny cries. “I want coconut, Max wants chocolate frosted.”

“You and Max have to share,” I say.

“
No!
” Max kicks the back of my seat this time.

“Denny!” I yell in my best warning voice. “I'm doing something nice. You can either say thank you or forget it.”

There's silence for a few seconds and then a grumbled, “Thank you.” My eyes fall on the letter from Denny's school, still sitting on top of the dashboard. I haven't even thought about it since Monday. I guess I could tell Mrs. Mastino that Mom's in jail and buy a few weeks of pity overtime, but I know
it won't change anything in the long run. Denny has attention problems and behavior issues. He can be a sweet kid, but she's right—he's not getting what he needs to thrive, not at school and not at home. It's just a matter of time before they kick him out, and unless we can afford a special school, he'll just bounce around disrupting more classes and shoving more kids, getting yelled at by every adult in his life until he gets immune to it. I've seen those boys in the back of my classrooms, the ones who slump over their desks like they're asleep with their eyes open, staring angrily down at the ground and quietly doing their time. Teachers either ignore them or pick on them, rubbing their inadequacy in their faces. They're failing out of school, yes, but they're also being failed by the system. I can't let that be my brother's fate.

I get a couple of doughnuts and a large iced coffee and then pull into a parking space so we can eat without getting it all over ourselves—not that a fresh dusting of crumbs would even be visible amid the crap rolling around on Goldie's floor. I hand Denny his chocolate-coconut compromise, and he temporarily kicks Max to the curb so he can shove the entire thing in his mouth. But when I hand Cass a raspberry jelly—her favorite—she turns away.

“Come on, take it,” I prod. “You haven't eaten anything.”

Silence.

“You're
diabetic
,” I say, still holding it out inches from her face. “You're not allowed to not eat.”

She looks at me quickly and shakes her head, chewing on her lip.

“Just take it for later,” I say, and Cass bursts into tears.

“I said I
don't want it
!” she sobs.

It's been so long since I've seen my sister cry that instead of trying to hug or comfort her I just freeze in place staring like I'm rubbernecking at a roadside accident, the jelly doughnut getting warm and soft in my increasingly tight grip. Cass buries her face in her sleeve, her narrow shoulders shaking, and we sit in silence for a minute until Denny pulls his head up over the seatback and tugs three times on her hood with a coconut-crusted fist.

“Max is really sorry he kicked you,” he says, his voice high and sweet, and Cass quiets, wiping snot from her nose with the back of one hand.

“It's not that,” I say. “It's something I did.”

“No it isn't,” Cass sniffs.

“You don't have to pretend for his sake,” I say. “I should never have told you about Buck like that, out of nowhere. I should have sat you down and—”

“It's not about him,” she says, more forcefully.

“About who?” Denny asks. “Dad?” I hand him the jelly doughnut as a distraction.

“Then
what
?” I ask Cass. She looks down into her lap, while Goldie's rattle vibrates under us like a volcano about to erupt. “Is it school?” I press on. “Those girls—did they do something? Are people messing with you? Do you . . . have anything you want to tell me?”

Fresh tears spring to Cass's eyes, and she wipes them away with the already-damp cuff of her hoodie.

“You have to talk to me,” I say. “If you tell me what's going on, I can help. I can—”

“What?” she snaps. “What can you do? Tell them to stop? Tell them my mom's locked up and my dad's about to bite it,
so they should give me a break?” Cass sucks in her cheeks and straightens her back. “Just forget it,” she says.

I shift into reverse and back slowly out of the parking space, trying to give myself time to think. After what just happened, I can't drop my sister off at school like it's no big deal. Maybe I
should
put my forgery skills to good use, write an absence note, and let them play hooky for a day; blow all my cash at a theme park or an arcade, live it up for one last hurrah before we all get carted off to foster care. Because that's what will happen, eventually. We're running out of options. We can't stay with Aunt Sam anymore. She may be our blood, but she's not our family—real family doesn't hold you for ransom. And even if I could stick it out long enough to post bail for Mom, what then? Court dates and sentencing and probably jail time. If not now, then someday in the not-too-distant future. We don't have anyone we can depend on to take care of us, I'm doing a shitty job, and even if I
did
take the CPS lady's advice and decide to throw everything away to become a legal guardian, we'd be screwed for five more weeks, and right now it feels like we won't make it five
days
. If this was a video game, the three of us would be falling off a cliff to sad trombone music while the words
GAME OVER
flashed on the screen.

I brake for a stoplight, and Goldie's rattle gets even louder. I have no idea what to do. We're less than a mile from Denny's school. I pick up my watery iced coffee just to have something to do with my hands instead of anxiously tapping the wheel, and a damp receipt falls off the bottom of the plastic cup. I look down at the handwritten black ink numbers starting to bleed together.
Tim
. He must be on his way to school now, too, him and Leah, in their swanky SUV—in the light of day
this time—listening to Top 40 hits instead of the death knell of their junky car, smiling their Crest Whitestrips smiles and wearing their wrinkle-free clothes that probably smell like fabric softener and freshly mowed grass. The jealousy hits me in the gut just as the light turns green.

“Who did Dad bite?” Denny pipes up from the backseat.

“He didn't bite anyone,” I sigh, merging into the slow lane, trying to decide where to go. “It's just an expression.”

“I don't get it,” he says. I look to Cass, hoping she'll jump in with one of her perfectly timed punch lines to shut down the line of questioning, but she's leaning against the window, gnawing anxiously on a thumbnail.

“It means he's . . . sick,” I say after some consideration. “Buck is sick.” I don't think Denny will be as calm as Cass and me when he finds out Buck is dying. I'm planning on putting off that conversation for as long as humanly possible.

“How'd he get sick?” Denny asks.

“I don't know,” I say, rubbing my right temple with one hand, hoping for once that Max steps in to pull one of his douchey stunts. “He probably did something he wasn't supposed to do.” Buck would only be in his midthirties, so it has to be drugs, or maybe cancer. Something slow and awful, which I wouldn't wish even on my worst enemy . . . who also happens to be my father.