Stand Alone (22 page)

She put down her board gently, and stroked the edge, so relieved to have it back. She couldn’t believe how difficult it had been to be separated from it, first while she was sick, and then for another week afterward. It had been the worst punishment that Em could have invented. Justine was already working on a plan to make sure it couldn’t happen again. Of course, she wouldn’t go anywhere without her board. It hadn’t been her fault that she had lost it during her medical collapse, but she would have to be even more vigilant in the future. She was also going to buy another board. She wasn’t sure yet where she would hide it. In her locker during the school year? Maybe in the basement? Maybe somewhere else, not at school or home, if she could find somewhere that felt safe. She didn’t have any way of earning money right now, but that didn’t preclude her from getting money. The easiest thing to do would be to use Em’s credit card to order the board online. Even if she stole cash, she couldn’t pay for anything online with cash. And the local stores didn’t have any good boards. Some second-rate kiddie boards, but nothing good. She would watch for her chance, and get one as soon as she could. Then Em would never be able to punish her by taking away her board again.

Justine had her earphones in and was listening to music, though really she had no idea what was playing as she worked out the details of her plan. She didn’t hear Em knocking on her door, her brain distracted by her thoughts and her ears muffled by the music on the headphones. Justine jumped when the door opened and Em poked her head in. With a curse and a gasp, Justine took off the earphones as music continued to blast away.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

“I did knock,” Em laughed. “Several times. If you want to be able to hear me, then you’d better turn down your music. Otherwise the only way I can get your attention when the pizza gets here is to come in.”

“The pizza’s here?” Justine repeated.

“Yeah. Pizza’s here.”

Justine got up off the bed and turned the music off. She went ahead of Em down the stairs, following her nose. How she had missed the sweet and spicy smell of fresh pizza during the enforced diet. It was like ambrosia. Justine inhaled deeply, and opened up the boxes. While Em watched, Justine took out a plate and loaded it up with two big slices from each pizza.

“Just take one at a time,” Em advised. “That’s proper etiquette.”

Justine swore at her. Proper etiquette? Not likely. She headed back upstairs. Em’s face fell.

“Stay down here and eat with me,” Em begged. “You can find something that you want to watch on TV, and we’ll watch it together. Okay?”

“No,” Justine said flatly. “You can eat down here with the people with proper etiquette, and I’ll eat like an animal upstairs.”

“I don’t want food in the bedroom,” Em protested, her voice rising as Justine took the steps two at a time. “The crumbs will attract mice, and
  
…”

Justine shut her door with a slam. She looked around slowly. She pulled out the shallow pen drawer of her desk, and pushed all of the pens and other detritus to one side. She put several sheets of clean paper down in the drawer, and transferred two of the pieces of pizza into the drawer. If Em decided tomorrow that the diet was back on, and Justine couldn’t have any more, then she would still have some edible food to fall back on. Looking at the door, she quickly pushed the desk drawer shut again, and sat on her bed to eat the remaining two slices of pizza. After she ate them, she waited for a while, so that Em wouldn’t be suspicious of her eating four pieces of pizza so fast. Then she went back downstairs again, and grabbed another four slices.

“You’re going to make yourself sick,” Em exclaimed. “You can’t eat all that! Have one slice at a time, and then decide if you are full or not. Don’t just try to snarf down four at a time
  
…”

“I’m hungry,” Justine told her. “Leave me alone.”

“Justine,” Em remonstrated, trying to keep her voice pleasant, but obviously getting ticked off. “Please listen to me. You can still have the pizza, but just have one piece at a time
  
…”

“Leave me alone,” Justine repeated forcefully. “The social worker said to let me eat what I wanted, and Dr. Morton said to let me eat what I wanted, so just let me eat!”

“That’s not what
  
…”

Justine started to swear and curse at the top of her voice. Em’s face flushed with embarrassment and she glanced self-consciously at the open windows. Justine raised the plate of pizza to throw on the floor in a fit, but changed her mind. The pizza was too important to waste on pique. She grabbed the juice jug instead and threw it at the tiled floor. Glass and sticky fluid went scattering all over the floor. Em shrieked. Justine stepped over it and took her second helping of pizza up the stairs to her room. After shutting her door, she waited for a couple of minutes to make sure that Em wasn’t going to storm up after her. Then she hid two more pieces of pizza away in the desk and sat down to eat the rest. Justine’s stomach was uncomfortably full by the time she was halfway through the third piece, but she pushed on through and ate them all.

She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. She poked at her sore, bulging belly, massaging it. She had pizza. Tony’s pizza. It felt wonderful to be so full.

Justine could tell when she woke up that she had slept in much later than usual. The sun was shining full on her window, warming the room uncomfortably. She pushed off her blankets and turned to look at the clock. She had been so used to Em trying to keep her on a regular sleep schedule and taking her out on all of her errands lately. It was weird to wake up on her own, to be allowed to just keep her own schedule. Justine stretched and yawned loudly, and went down the hall to the bathroom.

When she went downstairs, everything was quiet. Em was not around. No breakfast was on the table. The glass and juice had been cleaned up, but the last couple of pieces of pizza were still out on the counter. Justine picked up a cold piece of pizza and started to eat. She put in a cup of coffee to brew, and wandered over to the computer while she waited. She started to search for an online store where she could order a new skateboard. When the coffee machine started beeping, Justine got up to get her cup, mind occupied by the various options for a new board. She picked up the cup and sipped at the scalding hot coffee. It was then Justine noticed that Em’s purse was sitting on the counter. Em never left her wallet out where it was easily accessible anymore. Justine poked her head into each of the main floor rooms, but didn’t find Em.

Justine stealthily took Em’s wallet out of her purse, and slid her credit card out of her wallet. She listened for a moment for any signs of life upstairs, but hearing nothing, went back to the computer. She’d never dreamed that it would be so easy to get her hands on Em’s credit card. Em was super uptight about leaving it out. Justine had never hoped that Em would just leave it out on the counter and there would be no need to distract her or go searching for it in the night. This was almost too easy.

After looking through a couple more stores, she selected the new board that she wanted, and paid for it using Em’s credit card. She took the card back into the kitchen and replaced it in the wallet in Em’s purse. Justine would just have to watch the mail and make sure that Em’s credit card statement never reached her. If Em didn’t get it in the mail, she wouldn’t have time to review it when she realized it was due, and would be in a panic to avoid any late charges. A couple hundred dollars extra wouldn’t be enough to make her take notice.

Justine spent a bit more time on the computer, checking her e-mail and indifferent social networks. She went back upstairs to shower and do her hair. She stuck her head in Em’s bedroom door and saw Em lying in bed still.

“Why are you still in bed?” she demanded. “Are you sick?”

Em groaned and rolled over, squinting at Justine.

“Yes,” she agreed, “I’ve got a migraine. It hit last night, after
  
…”

Justine’s eyes started to adjust to the dark. Em still had on her fuzzy slippers from last night, she hadn’t even bothered to take them off. She was just lying across the bed with her housecoat and slippers still on.

“Okay,” Justine said, shrugging. “So you don’t need the shower? I’m going to do my hair.”

“No.”

Em groaned again, more dramatically. Justine rolled her eyes.

“Will you be able to help me dry and style it after?” Justine questioned.

“No. You’ll have to do it yourself, Justine. I’m sick.”

“Well, I thought you could still help with my hair. Fine.”

She stomped back down the hall to the bathroom and got in the shower. Since Em didn’t need it, she could have as long shower as she wanted to, as long as the hot water tank held. She washed and conditioned her hair first so that she wouldn’t have to rinse in cold water when the hot ran out. Then she just luxuriated in the steaming hot water, massaging her scalp with her eyes closed.

Some days later, Em was at work, and Justine had the house to herself. She went into Em’s room and looked through the baby book and pictures again. Justine still didn’t believe that baby was her. She had no emotional connection with that baby. When she saw it, she didn’t feel any kinship with that baby. That wasn’t her. That wasn’t her life. That was somebody else’s life. Even though the DNA test had said it was her, she still didn’t believe it.

Justine flipped through the baby book, looking for anything else that might help her to solve the puzzle. At the beginning of the book, she stopped at the long form birth certificate. She’d never really paid any attention to it before. But she realized that there was a different town listed as the place of birth. Justine had been born in another city? Burbank
  
…
 
where was that? Why hadn’t Em ever mentioned that she was born in another town? She always said that Justine had lived in this house her whole life. Had she just been born while Em was out of town? Or had Em lied about that too? What was the story?

Justine took a picture of the page with her phone and carefully put everything away.

She stopped and looked at Em’s jewelry box. It was locked, as usual. Casting her eyes over the orderly dresser top, Justine grabbed a sharply pointed letter opener and pushed it into the flimsy little lock. The lock was more decorative than functional. It certainly wasn’t a safe. Justine pushed and twisted and pried until the clasp popped up. She put the letter opener aside and took a look through the jewelry box. Everything was neatly corralled in individual little boxes and sections. She could remember when she was little, Em would let her sit on the bed with the jewelry box and paw through the contents, holding up various items to ask Em where she had gotten them, or if they were real diamonds, or to model them for Em. But that had ended when Justine kept tangling and breaking the jewelry, or losing small parts. Some of the lost charms and earrings had made it to hidden stashes in Justine’s room. She never wore them. She didn’t wear any jewelry. She just liked having them. Justine looked through the neatly-partitioned jewelry and took out a locket. She used her fingernail to open the catch. Inside was a tiny picture of baby Justine and another lock of fine, dark hair. Justine put it around her neck, careful not to get it tangled in her hair as she did it up. Justine looked at herself in the mirror, then hid the locket under her shirt, and shut the jewelry box. She tried pushing the jewelry box clasp closed again, but it didn’t catch. Apparently, it was broken. Justine shrugged and left it like that.

C
HAPTER
11

S
UMMER
VACATION
HAD
SPED
by. It was worse now with an extended vacation at Christmas and in the spring; the summer break seemed like it had barely started and it was over. And Christmas and spring break didn’t really seem like they were any longer than they used to be. Not long enough to really do anything. So instead of one good break and two little breaks, you just got three mediocre breaks. At least Justine hadn’t had to suffer through summer school this time. Em had tried that one year, hoping to have Justine out of her hair over the summer. She had never tried that again.

Now, everything was back to routine. The same kids either making fun of Justine or ignoring her. The same teachers and administrators giving her a hard time, not listening to her complaints, not giving her any attention. But, at the same time, it was a comfortable sameness. She knew what to expect and it was easier to get through a day when she was used to the routine than when things happened unexpectedly.

It was raining, so Justine didn’t feel like going out skating over the lunch hour. She ate her lunch quickly in the hallway, avoiding sitting down in the cafeteria. Then she went to the library to see if she could snag a computer before the rush. One of the boys from her grade was packing up his stuff at one of the computer stations. Hardy met her eyes, and jerked his head slightly in an invitation.

“Here, I’m just finished. Go ahead and take this one.”

“Thanks,” Justine acknowledged. It could be hard to get a computer, especially over the lunch hour, so she appreciated being able to jump the queue.

She sat down and Hardy zipped up his backpack. He gave her a nod and a casual ‘see ya,’ and left.

Justine checked to see if she had any messages. Nothing much in her in box other than spam. A few articles or newsletters that she had subscribed to, but mostly just junk. And nothing was happening on her social networks. Why would it? She didn’t have any ‘friends.’ Justine switched tracks and did a search on the delivery ticket for her new skateboard. It looked like it would arrive tomorrow. She might just fake sick to ensure that she was home to get it and Em didn’t see it before Justine got her hands on it. Justine was excited about the new board. It was going to be a sweet ride, and would ensure that Em could not hold her hostage again.

She typed Burbank into the search engine and started to research the city. It wasn’t a big city, but not just a little hick town either. They had their own hospital, fire department, and police department and was a suburb of the bigger city. Not a big tourist draw, but they had all of the basic amenities. Was that where she had been born? Justine was baffled to think that she had never really known her birthplace before. She had always just assumed, or Em had always just told her, that she had lived there her whole life. She searched Em’s name in Burbank. Not surprisingly, there were no hits. She searched her own name. She searched just ‘Bywater’ in the online white pages and got back a bunch of unrelated hits. She didn’t know what the search engine was doing, it seemed to have a mind of its own. There certainly didn’t seem to be any Bywaters living in Burbank any more. If that was where Em had come from, or where her people were, they weren’t showing up. Justine leaned back, closing her eyes.