“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! Omigod!!!”
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?”
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 i
n 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?”