Thirteen (20 page)

“Winnie, come sit down,” Dad said. “Your quarter pounder's getting cold.”

“I will,” I said, knowing I wouldn't. “I've just got to make a call first, okay?”

I went to the den so I could talk in private.
If
he was even there. If he wasn't over at Stephanie's or Brianna's for another wild blowout.

“Mitchell residence,” Lars said when he answered, because he thought it was a corny-cool way to pick up.

I said nothing. I felt dead inside, which was so dumb. I wasn't dead. I wasn't even sick. There were so many things in the world that were more important than my pathetic problems, and yet here they were anyway: my pathetic problems, making me feel dead inside.

“Yo,” Lars said. “Hola! Anyone there?”

“It's me,” I said.

“Winnie!” he said, sounding, as always, happy to hear from me.

“You didn't call. You promised you'd call, and you didn't.”

He laughed. Not a real laugh, but a defensive “guy” laugh.

“I was going to,” he said. “It's, like, seven-thirty! The night is young!”

I waited.

“I was watching CNN with my dad. World issues, man. Big, big, big.”

I blinked back tears. I didn't want to be this nagging freak-girl. I didn't like the way it made me feel, the way it changed me.

“You have to be nicer to me,” I said.

Again, he laughed. “What? I'm King of Nice. What are you talking about?”

“You have to be nicer to me, or…or…”

“Or what?” he said. Still Lars, still charming and jokey, but with a thread of fear. It snaked in and pierced my numbness and almost broke my resolve. Almost, but not quite.

“Or I have to break up with you,” I whispered.

What more was there to say? Nothing. So I hung up.

V
ALENTINE'S DAY
SUCKED
.
Seriously, it was the meanest, suckiest holiday ever. If you had a boyfriend, then Valentine's Day was fine and dandy and chocolate candy. But if you didn't? Then lucky you, you got to skulk about in your cloud of loser-ness as blissful couples gamboled like fawns and flung rosebuds into the air.

It was a gloater's holiday, that's what it was. It encouraged people to gloat, gloat, gloat.
Look at me! I'm happy! Look at me! I'm loved!

But I wasn't happy, and I wasn't loved, and as I trudged through the motions of getting ready for school, I wished I could push a fast-forward button and skip over Valentine's Day entirely. Ever since Lars and I broke up—which I guess is what we did, although that wasn't what I wanted—school had been nothing but misery. Whenever I saw Lars in the halls or on the quad, Cinnamon yanked my arm and pulled me the opposite direction. She said Lars was a jerk, just like Bryce, and that I was better off without him.

“He has to prove himself to you,” she said. “And he hasn't, so he doesn't get to talk to you.”

“But what if I want to talk to him?” I asked.

“Too bad,” she said.

Dinah was kinder. Dinah said that Lars liked me, she knew he did, but that he hadn't learned to be the sort of person he had it within himself to be. Or something like that. She agreed that he had to come to me, though.

“He kind of has to,” she said, scrinching her face like she knew it wasn't what I wanted to hear.

So, yeah. School sucked. Today would be even more miserable than usual, because of Valentine's Day carnations. Last year, Lars sent me a pink carnation. We were young and innocent and hadn't even kissed yet—hadn't even held hands!—but he sent me a pink carnation, and I floated on air.

This year, there would be no pink carnations, and their absence would be a blinking neon light above my head. A blinking light of sadness as deep as my bones.

Ty wandered into my room as I gloomily tugged on a pair of black hose to go with my black skirt and shirt. I figured I was in mourning, so I might as well dress like it.

“Those are ugly,” he commented, regarding my floppy stocking feet. He plopped onto my bed. “They look like rotten elephant trunks.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

“I wouldn't wear those ugly things if I were you. I would take them off and throw them in the trash.”

“Well, when I want fashion advice from a seven-year-old, I'll ask for it,” I snapped.

His expression faltered. “Why are you being mean?”

“
I'm
not being mean—you are. You're the one coming in here and telling me how ugly I am!”

“Not you! Your stockings!” He looked worried, the way he always got when he thought someone was mad at him.

“It's the same thing. Saying my stockings are ugly is the same as saying I'm ugly, so you should think about that next time before you start insulting someone.” It was working—I was making him feel as bad as I did—only it didn't feel as good as I'd hoped. So I tried to soften it. “Okay, Tyler-poo?”

His breaths quickened. “You called me poop! You called me poop!”

“What? No, I didn't.”

“Poo is poop, so you did, too!”

Oh God.
Why had I bothered?

“Ty, give it up,” I said. “You're acting like a baby.”

“Nuh-uh, Winifred-vomit.”

“Uh-huh, Tyler-dirty-belly-button.”

“Nuh-
uh
, Winnie-diarrhea!” Ty cried. He got to his feet, hands balled into fists. “Nuh-uh, Winnie-dirty-bagina!”

I gaped. I knew I wasn't being the best big sister…but calling someone a dirty bagina?

“Ty, you need to apologize,” I said sharply.

“
You
need to apologize!”

“No, you do. And if you're not going to, you need to shut up and get out of my room.”

Ty looked shocked. Then came the tears. Big floppy tears that didn't spill out, but just welled in his eyes, giving him the appearance of an abused orphan.

I felt bad, but it was a twisty, pissy kind of bad. The world was a hard, cold place—how would he ever survive if one measly “shut up” could bring him to tears?!

“It is weird,” he whispered. “I miss you, but you're right here.”

“Yeah, well, I won't be forever,” I said. “No one will. And then how will you feel, huh?” There was a stabbing in my heart as I pointed to the door. “Now leave.”

 

In the front seat of Sandra's car, as we drove to Westminster, I stared out the window with my head resting against the glass. A line from a Dr. Seuss book played through my head:
Gray Day. Everything is gray. I watch. But nothing moves today
.

Sandra flicked on the turn signal as we approached the school, and I sighed.

“Could we just not?” I said. “Couldn't we skip, just this once?”

Sandra glanced at me. The two of us hadn't spoken for the whole ride, and I got the sense she wasn't in the greatest mood, either—probably because Bo was out of town visiting the University of South Carolina.

She bit the corner of her lip…then did the strangest thing. She flicked the turn signal off. I lifted my head. I sat up straight and watched, amazed, as we passed Westminster's front gate.

“Are you serious?” I said. Excitement filled me, but anxiety, too. “We'll get busted! We'll totally get suspended!”

“For skipping one day? I don't think so,” Sandra said. “But just in case, hand me my cell.”

I fished for it in her bag and gave it to her. She dialed four-one-one and requested Westminster's main number. Once connected, she asked to be put through to the girls' school.

“Hey there,” she said smoothly, taking on the “phone voice” Mom used and which Sandra always mocked. “This is Ellen Perry, and I just wanted to let you know that Sandra and Winnie won't be coming in today. I'm afraid they've both got a stomach bug.”

Holy pickles, holy pickles! I held frozen in my seat. There was spazziness inside me, but I held it in tight.

“Oh, I
know
,” Sandra was saying. She really did sound freakily like Mom. “Mmm-hmm. I hope so, too. Yes, I certainly will—thanks so much!”

She clapped shut her phone and looked at me victoriously. I screamed.

“Omigod, Sandra!” I said, bouncing like crazy. “You are so awesome! You are the best big sister ever! Omi
god
!!!”

She tried to play it cool, but her lips curved up despite herself. “I am, aren't I?” She opened her phone back up and hit the “off” button. Its farewell tinkle let us know it was shutting down. “There, now we can't be bothered even if someone tries.”

I leaned back in my seat. I soaked in the glorious blue of the sky. Then I turned, beaming, to Sandra and said, “So…what should we do? We can't go home, obviously.”

“And we can't go to school,” she said.

I giggled. No Valentine's Day hoopla! No terrible, ugly carnations! No worrying about passing Lars in the hall and seeing him with evil Brianna! I was fizzy with adrenaline.

“Let's go to the butterfly center,” I said. I'd always wanted to go to the butterfly center, where butterflies supposedly flitted everywhere and landed on your shoulders and hair and outstretched hands.

“The butterfly center is all the way out by Callaway Gardens,” Sandra said. “That's, like, over an hour away.”

“So? We have all day!”

She shook her head. “We're not going to the butterfly center.”

“Then how about the Georgia Aquarium? We can pet the sharks!” They were teeny sharks, teeny sand sharks which could never eat a human in their life, but so? It was still cool to stroke their sinuous bodies.

“I don't think so,” Sandra said, as if it was a stupid idea and she was just barely refraining from saying so. It made me feel childish instead of grown-up, which was so not the point on a day of skipping school.

“Okay…what do
you
want to do?” I asked, trying to sound less hyper. I sure didn't want her deciding she'd made a mistake.

“I'm hungry. Let's go to Katz's Deli.”

Eww
, I thought.
Katz's Deli?
Katz's Deli was where old ladies went. Katz's Deli sold lox. But I nodded and said, “Sure. Yum.”

At our table, over bagels with roast beef and Muenster cheese, Sandra unloaded about spring semester and how stressful it was and how she was already so sad about going to college and leaving all her friends behind.

“Well, not
behind
,” she amended. “It's not like they're staying in Atlanta while I march bravely forth. But that's what's so depressing! Everyone's just going their own directions!” She counted off on her fingers. “Elizabeth's going to UNC; she got the Rhodes Scholarship. Raelynn's almost definitely going to Carlton, and Tess is going to Stanford. Which is in California, which is all the way across the country! At best I'll see her over Christmas break. How wrong is that?”

“Um…pretty wrong?” I said. Tess was nice—she gave me a pair of hand-me-down jeans that were too small for her or any of the other seniors—but Sandra had only just started being friends with her this year. I couldn't see how Tess moving to California was
that
big a tragedy.

“And Bo…” she said. She sighed and put down her bagel sandwich, which she'd taken one small bite of.

Ahhh. Bo
. Yes, that was the real tragedy. Bo was Sandra's love, and now they were going to be torn apart like Romeo and Juliet.

I used to have a love.

I still
did
have a love. He just didn't have me.

“Is Bo going to USC for sure?” I asked.

“Pretty sure,” Sandra said. She tugged free a piece of roast beef and played with it, turning it over and over. “They're offering him baseball money. It would be hard to turn down.”

“And you for sure want to go to Middlebury,” I stated. Middlebury, which was in Vermont, was Sandra's top choice, and Sandra's college counselor said things looked good for Sandra getting accepted. As in, she'd be shocked if Sandra didn't.

“Yeah,” Sandra said morosely.

The thought which ran through my head was,
But if you're so depressed about it…why go? Why not go to USC, too? And then just visit Vermont to go skiing or whatever.

But I stayed silent and tried to look understanding. It was rare that Sandra talked to me like this, straight and real as if we were on the same level.

“Sometimes I wonder if he and I should just go ahead and break up now,” Sandra said. “Do you know how few high school relationships last? Like, none. Seriously, maybe one out of a zillion.”

“But you guys could be that one,” I said. I sipped my lemonade, careful not to slurp. I took a delicate bite of my sandwich, which was difficult, given its bagel-ness. Bagel sandwiches were very mouth-stretching, and once the bite was claimed, you had to chew and chew and chew.

“Sometimes I don't even know if I
want
us to last,” she said.

Now I was glad my mouth was full of bagel, so I didn't have to respond. She and Bo, not together…? I couldn't even imagine.

“I'm supposed to stay with my very first boyfriend forever?” she went on. “And not date anyone else? And get married, and have kids, and never know what it's like to go out with someone else?”

“But—” I tried to shift some of the bagel glop around to make room for words. “If you
love
him—”

“I do love him! He's the love of my life!” She looked tormented. “Only…what if he
isn't
?”

I was amazed that Sandra was saying this. Amazed, too, that her fear was what if
he
isn't, not
what if I'm not
. Not
What if Bo finds someone else? What if he stops loving me? What if he's the love of my life, but I'm not the love of his?

A question rose up, and I tried to figure out how to ask it, because I wanted to learn from Sandra while I still could. Because she wouldn't just be leaving Bo and her friends when she went to Vermont. She'd be leaving me, too. Which was so incomprehensible—a house without Sandra?—that I didn't really know how to process it.

“How did you…you know…”

She wrinkled her brow. “How did I what?”

I swallowed.
Finally
. “How did you…make him love you?”