Thirteen (21 page)

The minute it was out, the very
second
it was out, I regretted it.
How did you make him love you?!

“Never mind,” I said quickly. My face burned, and I took another bite of sandwich to fill my stupid mouth.

But Sandra was kind. She knew what I was really asking, which wasn't about Bo. It was about Lars. What did I do wrong?

She gazed at me. “Oh, Winnie. It sucks, doesn't it?”

My throat tightened, because it
did
suck. I loved Sandra for saying it. For not making me feel like a baby.

Sandra peered at the piece of roast beef she'd been fooling with. She frowned.

“What?” I said.

“Is roast beef supposed to glisten?” She twisted it to make it catch the light, and I saw what she was talking about. There was a rainbow sheen on the meat, little scales of fluorescence. She drew the beef to her nose and sniffed. “Eww.”

I spit out the chunk in my mouth. The big chunk. The other chunks, the ones already swallowed, roiled in my stomach and cast up the cry of rotting meat.

“Gross,” Sandra said, observing the half-chewed mass on my plate.

There was an extreme likeliness of throwing-up in my near future, which Sandra must have read on my face. She pointed to the bathroom at the back of the restaurant and said, “Go.”

I scooched back my chair and ran.

 

As far as exciting, glamorous,
look-at-us-we're-ditching
adventures go, our day was pretty much a bust. Sandra was depressed, and so was I. Plus I smelled like vomit. Not hugely so, not so much that an innocent bystander would have breathed in and gagged, but enough to linger in my awareness. I'd made it to the deli's bathroom, but just barely, and a little of the barf had splattered on my shirt. I'd scrubbed it with water and soap, but still. The stink of throw-up was hard to shake.

We'd gone from the deli to the mall, where we moped around and felt bludgeoned by commercialism. There were lots of moms and strollers, more so than in my normal mall-going hours, and while the babies were cute, seeing them parade by made me think about life and how it slogged on and on and never stopped. Babies were born, old people died. And not just old people, because un-old people died, too. Kids, even, which of course made me think of Joseph. I grew even more depressed.

We left the mall and went to Memorial Park, where at least the sun felt good on our skin. And then, at three-thirty, we went home. I think we both felt lame.

As Sandra pulled into the driveway, my eyes flew to the front porch. It was dumb,
I
was dumb, but I couldn't help it. Ever since the day of the telephone call, I'd been hoping Lars would magically show up and make everything better. Like he did that day at the beginning of the year, when there he was, lounging against the house looking so adorable and nervous.

Lars wasn't there. My shoulders slumped.

Sandra drove around back to the garage. She parked and cut off the engine, but she didn't get out.

“Listen,” she said. “What you asked earlier? About making someone love you?”

I flushed.

“Well, I need to tell you something about that, because probably you
can't
make someone love you. And if they don't, they don't, and you're better off without them.”

I kept my eyes glued to the dashboard.

“Seriously, it's better to be alone than to wish you were alone,” she said. “Okay?”

I appreciated her effort, but I'd never wished I was alone when I was with Lars. I'd wished Nose-Ring Girl was alone, not me.

Sandra flopped back against her seat, as if aware of how unhelpful she was being. “Or maybe that's just crap,” she said. “Or maybe sometimes it's crap and sometimes it's not, depending on the situation. And Lars…”

Lars
. His name filled me with longing.

Sandra turned her head so that she faced me. “Can I start over here? Can I try the whole advice thing again?”

“I guess,” I said.

“The thing is…Lars is a good guy. He's just stupid. Only, you're kind of being stupid, too.”

I gazed at her. This was brilliant attempt number two?

“Because one thing I do know—and I don't know a lot, but I do know this—is that you can't wallow. Wallowing will get you nowhere.”

“Didn't we just spend the whole day wallowing?” I said.

“Er…” She looked embarrassed, then regrouped and held up her finger. “Case in point. And did it make things better?”

“Not really. But kind of.”

“No, it didn't, and you know it.” She exhaled. “What I'm trying to say here is that maybe you should talk to him again.”

“But that would be weak.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he's the one who's weak, and he needs you to take the first step.” She arched her eyebrows. “But like I said, what do I know?”

Everything
, I thought.
You're my big sister.

“You really think I should talk to him?” I said. It hurt how much I wanted to.

“It can't make things any worse,” she said fatalistically. “You're, like, in this state of not-knowing, and that sucks more than anything.
Probably
it's over—but if you ask him straight out, at least you'll know for sure.”

“True,” I said in a tiny voice. I nodded to give myself bravery. “Thanks.”

 

Stepping into our house felt like stepping back into Normal Life. Bright sunny kitchen, good clean smells, the sound of Ty acting out some drama in the den involving Ninjas. Then we heard the sound of Mom's clogs clomping down the stairs and through the living room.

Angry clomps, full of angry Mom-ness.

“Uh-oh,” Sandra said.

Mom strode into the kitchen. We knew it was over by the expression on her face. “
Girls
,” she said.

“Bu-sted,” Sandra murmured, drawing the word out.

Mom whirled on her. “Don't you make light of this! What was going through your head, cutting an entire day of school? And not only that, but encouraging your sister—your
thirteen-year-old sister
—to follow you into your life of crime?”

“Mom,” I said. “Skipping one day is hardly a—”

“Hush,” she said to me. “I am not any happier with you, so you just keep your mouth shut, do you hear?”

I couldn't keep my mouth shut
and
respond to her question. But I knew I was going to lose either way, so I said, “Um…sorry?”

“You better be,” she said. “I brought you your English paper, Winnie, because that is the kind of good mother I am. I saw it on the counter and thought, ‘Oh, poor Winnie,' and I delivered it to your classroom. Only guess what?”

I shrank.

“That's right! You weren't in your classroom!” Mom said. She switched back to Sandra. “So I tried calling, but your phone went straight to voice mail. So I rushed to the administration office, thinking, ‘Were they in a wreck? Are they lying maimed and dead on the road somewhere?'”

Oh good golly
. Maimed and dead? I knew we'd screwed up…but
maimed and dead
?

“Mom,” Sandra started.

Mom waggled her finger. “Oh no no. Uh-uh. And then to find out from Mrs. Westin that I myself had called in to say you'd be absent? That you had a
stomach bug
?!”

Sandra winced. I cringed. But even though we were in trouble, there was something solid about standing with Sandra as Mom's scolding rained down.

“Mom, I'm really sorry,” Sandra said.

“Me, too,” I piped in.

“I just…I don't…” Sandra exhaled. “It's like I'm out of control or something!”

Where was she going with this? “Me, too,” I said less certainly.

“I don't even trust my own judgment anymore,” Sandra continued. “All this stress about being a senior, it's gotten to me so much more than I thought. And I
know
I shouldn't have let Winnie cut. She's just an eighth grader. What was I thinking?”

I was confused. What
was
she thinking? And what was this business about me being “just an eighth grader”?

Mom sighed, and her expression went from angry to not quite as angry. “Oh, Sandra.”

“I'm a mess,” Sandra said, her voice quavering. “I'm a complete and total mess!”

It was as if a train was zooming past, and I better jump on it, quick. “Me, too!” I said. “An even messier mess!”

They stared at me.

The phone rang, a high-pitched trill that Ty had punched in on the menu button and that none of us could manage to change back. Mom startled, and then her features went back to being stern.

“Don't think I'm done with you two,” she warned as she strode across the kitchen. She picked up the phone. “Hello? Oh, hi! How are you?”

She talked. Sandra and I eyed each other.

“I can't believe you left your English paper at home, idiot,” Sandra whispered. She shoved me.

“I can't believe you blamed everything on senior stress!” I whispered in return. I shoved her back.

“'Cause it's true! I've lost all sense of reason!” She kept her self-righteousness alive for another couple of seconds, and then she drew her knuckles to her mouth. She giggled, and so did I.

“Carol, that's wonderful!” Mom said, over by the back door. “I'm so glad to hear it. Oh, I'm just
so
glad. Thanks so much for telling me!”

“That's a lot of ‘so's,” Sandra commented.

“
Soooo
many,” I agreed.

Mom got off the phone. She clopped back to us—happy clops this time—and her face was lit up. “That was Carol Webber, Ty's teacher. She just heard from Joseph's mom. He's turned the corner!”

“He has?” Sandra said. She hadn't gone to the hospital with us, but she knew about Joseph and had been just as worried as the rest of us.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means he's responding to the treatment. His white blood cell count is going down. It looks like he's going to be okay!”

My chest clutched up. “For real?
Okay
okay, as in forever?”

Mom was teary. She smiled through it and said “That's what the doctors are saying.”

A balloon opened up inside me, pushing the clutchiness away and replacing it with joy. Mom pulled me and Sandra into a hug, and we hugged her back. We were a big ball of hugginess. We pressed warm and hard together, being careful of Mom's baby bump.

“I don't know what I would do if I lost you girls,” Mom murmured, her voice catching.

“Or Ty,” I said.

“Or Ty.” Mom squeezed tighter.

“Does this mean we're not punished?” Sandra said.

Mom released us. Beaming, she said, “Are you nuts? Of course you're punished. You both have Saturday detentions for the next four Saturdays, and you're on kitchen duty for the rest of your lives.”

Sandra groaned. She hated doing the dishes.

“She's probably too much of a mess to clean up the kitchen,” I offered.

Sandra shot daggers at me. “I
am
,” she said.

“Well, a tidy kitchen equals a tidy soul,” Mom said gaily. “Now let's go tell Ty the good news.”

 

Later, when I told Mom there was something I had to do and asked if I could go out for a teeny-tiny little hour before dinner, she said, “You're kidding, right?”

“Um…no?” I said.

“You skipped school, and you're asking if you can go out?”

“Um…yes?” I made praying hands. “It's really important, I swear. Or I wouldn't ask.”

She regarded me.

“Please? Pleasie please please?” I was full of wheedling on the surface, doing my best to be winning and cute. But the need inside me was raw and true. “
Please
?”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine—one hour. But I don't know why I'm letting you.”

“'Cause you're the best mom ever,” I said. “That's why.”

As I biked to Lars's house, I didn't let myself think. I just pedaled, focusing on not letting my skirt catch in the chain. But when I got there, his dad said Lars was out with friends.

“Can you tell me where?” I asked. “It's important.”

“I think he's at Bryce's,” Mr. Mitchell said.