Existing (26 page)

“Can we have take-out please?”

“Take-out?” I move around the kitchen, trying to find the cocoa powder. Ava never asks for take-out.

“Yeah, can we have Chinese?”

I glance at the jar of money that my Father keeps in the tin and know we have enough money in there. “Sure, but why do you want take-out?”

Ava
twirls the apples in the glass fruit bowl and shrugs. “I’ve checked the fridge and the pantry, and we don’t have anything except eggs and I don’t really want an omelette again.”

“Nothing?”
I walk to the fridge and see the butter and milk and two eggs. Where has all the food gone? I swear my Dad went food shopping over the weekend. “Okay,” I say in defeat. “We’ll get take-out.”

“Where’s Daddy anyway?”

I shuffle around the drawer, looking for the menu. “He’s working late.”

“He’s been working late lots,
hasn’t he?”

“Kind of
,” I reply, pulling the menu out. “What do you want to eat then?”

“Noodles
, please, and some of that red sauce.”

I walk out of the kitchen and
call in our order. I’m just about done giving them our address when my Father walks in through the door, shaking out his coat. I wave the menu at him, and when he finally realizes what I’m asking, he nods at me.

“Hang on a second
, please.” I put my hand over the receiver. “Hi, Dad. What do you want to eat?”

“My usual
, please,” he says, removing his shoes and placing his briefcase down onto the floor. “Where’s Ava and Hallie?”

I nod toward
the living room and roll my eyes. Ava comes bounding out of the kitchen and flings her arms around my Dad’s leg.

I put the phone at the side of my head again and apologi
ze to the man who has waited patiently before adding my Dad’s usual onto our order. As I’m listening to him repeat my entire order back to me, I watch my Dad creep into the living room. I hear him curse before he comes back out and closes the door.

“She’s a
disaster.” He walks past me and into the kitchen, where I hear him banging cabinet doors.

I finally finis
h my conversation with the patient Chinese man and replace the receiver. My Dad comes storming out of the kitchen with a face like thunder. “How long has she been in there?”

“She was like that when we got home from school and I think she’
s been there a while.”

“What the hell is she thinking
?” he hisses.

I shrug my shoulder
s and watch him scratch at his temple. He covers his eyes with his big, strong hand, and then pulls it slowly down his face. “You go and get the table ready and get us all drinks, and I’ll sort the mess out in there.”

“Okay.”

As I walk away, he pulls at my arm. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that, Rose.”

“It’s okay.”

“I mean it. You shouldn’t. Do you have any plans with friends this week, because I might be able to finish work early one day and get Ava if you want to go out? I’m conscious that you’re doing more and more, and now that you’ve made friends at this new school of yours, I want to make sure you have your own life.”

“I’ve been asked to go a party on Friday and Charlotte wanted me to go shopping with her tomorrow after school, but I can take
Ava shopping with me.”

He nods. “Okay, how about you take
Ava with you tomorrow, if you’re sure you don’t mind, and I’ll get Ava on Friday.”

I smile.
“Deal.”

“I have no ide
a what’s going on with her, Rose,” he says, looking even more tired than he did a few seconds ago. “I don’t know why she doesn’t pick Ava up from school. She doesn’t even work, for God’s sake.”

I don’t answer him
, for fear of Hallie overhearing, and instead walk into the kitchen, where Ava is practicing with the chopsticks.
“When are we seeing Cabe and Sebastian again?” she asks.

I stop getting t
he plates down from the cabinet and find myself staring at her. “Did you like playing with Sebastian?”

“Yeah,” she says
, wobbling her hand in the air to test out her grip on the chopsticks. “Cabe was nice too. I liked playing in the park with them.”

“We’ll see.”

She blinks at me and smiles. “I think Cabe likes you.”

“Do you now?” I say
, suddenly feeling shy. “And why do you think that?”

“Well,” she smiles, “I asked him and he told me so.”

“Oh, I see. Talking about me when I wasn’t there, were you?”

“Yeah, I told him that you look after me all the time and that I love you.”

I place a plate in front of her and lay two others out for my Dad and I. “Did Cabe ask you if I looked after you?”

She shakes her head.
“Nope. I just told him that if he wants to play with us again, then he needs to ask you because you look after me all the time anyway.”

“A
h, that makes sense now.”

“I liked Sebastian.”

“He was cute, wasn’t he?”

She wrinkles her face up. “Boys are not cute.
Boys smell.”

I laugh and hold my hand up for a high-five. “
You’re right about that.”

After we’ve eaten our dinner
, the three of us sit around the table and chat like we used to. I wonder if it’s only me who notices how much easier chatting is when Hallie isn’t around. My Father puts Ava to bed while I clean the kitchen. Afterward, I’m so exhausted that I kiss my Father, who looks as tired as I feel, tell him goodnight, and take myself to bed. It’s not even nine when my head hits the pillow.

As I walk to the bus stop on Friday morning, I see a car that I think I recognize waiting at the end of the street. As I walk past it, I hear the sound of the electric window going down.

“Rose, it’s me,
Gina.”

I peek through my hood and smile when I see her face.
“Oh, hi Gina.”

“Do you want a ride to school?”

I glance back down the street and smile. “Sure, thanks.”

I climb into the worn leather seats and click my seatbelt on as
the car lurches forward. “Charlotte went in early today. She mentioned something about studying for an Anatomy test.”

“Oh shoot, I’d forgotten about that.”

“Anyway,” she says, “I’ve come to ask you if you’ve found the diary.”

“Yes.
”

“You have?”

I notice the tone of surprise in her voice.

“It was exa
ctly where she said it would be,” I tell her.

“And what does it say?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”

She looks left and right about ten times before she finally pulls out
of the driveway and onto the main road. “When did you find it?”

“Last night.
It was late though and my Dad came back, so I just had to hide it in my room. Then I fell asleep before I had a chance to open it.”

She no
ds and indicates right onto Creek Road. “There must be something very important in there, Rose. Please be careful with whatever it is that you find out.”

I turn to look at her as I feel a frown creeping across my face. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I think the whole reason you’re Mother hasn’t passed is because she needs you to know something. The dead don’t stay around in the in-between world unless they have unfinished business.”

“U
m, okay.”

Gina pulls to the side of the road two streets away from the school. “I don’t want to go any further in case Charlotte happens to see.”

“Thanks for the ride,” I say, unclipping my seat belt.

“No problem. When are you planning on reading the diary
?”

“I was hoping to read it this morning, but I didn’t hear my alarm, so I got up late and I’m going to a party after school, so I’m hoping to read it when I get home later.”

She nods. “If you need to speak to me after you’ve read it, then call and we’ll sort something out.”

“Thank you,” I say
, opening my door.

“Nola was a good friend
to me. She kept my secret for many years. She was my only friend when I was younger and I will never forget her.”

I don’t quite know what to say to Gina after that, so I say nothing and smile weakly at her. I walk to school thinking of my Mother
, wondering what sort of life she really had and whether or not she was happy for most of it. Was it really me that made her hate herself so much that she ended her life?

“You were right.” Charlotte sl
ides in the seat next to me in Algebra and leans her head on the desk.

“I was right about what?”

“That I’d change my mind about that dress I bought.”

I laugh. “We both knew that the yellow one was a little too bright.”

“I know,” she sighs, “but you know, with my coloring and everything I thought I could pull it off.”

“So what
made you change your mind?” I ask, curious.

“I got home and tried it on in the daylight.”

“Oh.”

We both glance up as Cabe walks into the classroom wearing his sunglasses. Charlotte squirms in her seat and winks at me.

“Morning,” he says to me as he walks past our desk.

I watch every girl
turn their head as he walks to his seat at the back of the room.

“I don’t know how he does it.”

I turn back around and try to remove the grin that I can feel all over my face. “Does what?

She fans
her face with a folded-up piece of paper. “How he manages to look like that. I mean, he looks arrogant and cocky and oh my God, unbelievably sexy, but he’s not like that. You’d think, looking like he does, that he’d be screwing a different girl every week and he’d be an asshole, but he’s not. He’s really nice, which makes him even more desirable.”

“Yeah,
” I agree, “it does.”

She whips her around to face me and grins. “I knew you liked him from that first day when you crashed into him and he told everyon
e it was the other way around.”

“What?”

“Why would he have lied about it and why would you have let him?”

I shrug.
“Um, because he’s nice and didn’t want the new girl to get laughed at?”

“Nope
,” she says, tapping her pencil against her book. “He totally must have wanted you too.”

I shake my head. “Whatever.”

“Are you going to have sex with him tonight?”

“Charlotte,” I say
, feeling my cheeks go red. “I told you I’m a…virgin.”

She leans forward with a smile on her face and sings Madonna
quietly in my ear. “Rose is a virgin, touched for the very first time. Like a vi-ir-irginnnn. When your heart beats-“

“Enough,” I huff, holding my hand up in front of her face. “That’s so not funny.”

“It’s not funny that you’re probably the only virgin in this room, but you’ve got to admit that me singing that song just then was quite funny.”

“Not really.”

She pinches her fingers together and shoves them in my face. “Not even a little bit?”

I push her hand away and giggle. “Are you drunk or something?”

“Nope, I’m just high on life, Rose.”

I
roll my eyes at her and turn my head away before she sees my smile. “Oh my God.”

She breaks into a giggle and is laughing so hard that the table starts to vibrate.

“What’s so funny, Charlotte?”

My head snaps up to see the teacher storming into the room. She does not look happy. Charlotte is laughing so hard that she can’t stop. The whole class is looking at her as she giggles into the sleeve of her cardigan.

“Well?” asks the teacher, whose name I can’t remember.

She keeps
laughing which gives her the hiccups. The fact that she’s already annoyed the teacher by laughing and now has the hiccups makes the whole class erupt into more laughter, including me.

“Get out,
Charlotte.”

The teacher’s face has turned almost purple and I swear I can the see the blood vessels in her eyes all red and swollen.

“W-w-what?” asks Charlotte in between hiccups and laughter.

“I said
, get out. Get out!”

Charlotte turns to me and has her mouth clamped so tightly shut that her cheeks are blowing out at the side.