Dessert First (29 page)

It was hard to see the two pictures at the same time. Mean Rachel, so beautiful but snarling about everything, and desperate Drowningirl, with the miserable life and the sister who shredded her, and the parents who didn't love her at all, at least that she could tell.

When Beep was in the PICU, there was a little kid there, about eight, who'd had a stroke. The little guy got better and went to the step-down unit and to the floor, then back home to life, because he got well. For the first two days, though, before his brain adjusted, he saw everything double, and he thought it was hilarious. He'd shuffle along the hallway with his little rolling stand for the IV drip, and cheerfully explain there were two of you and ask, which girl he should he talk to—the one on the left or the right?

That's how I felt. Except it wasn't funny, and the two pictures didn't match at all. Snarling, mean, beautiful Rachel on the left, and her mirror image, wounded Drowningirl on the right, without words, except broken poems for her pain. I sat up and felt hot all over. I was always complaining that my sister was attacking me, and Drowningirl was always complaining about how her sister kept slicing her open, with the cutting remarks. She thought Mom and Dad loved me, but not her. She hadn't had a pregnancy scare. She had a suicide scare. She was in agony.

And I was responsible for a bunch of Drowningirl's—Rachel's—pain.

After another twenty minutes of tossing in bed, with a throbbing hand and conscience, I gave up on sleep. I got up and turned on the computer. Maybe I could at least try spraying a tearful apology on one bridge I'd burned, and send Evan a message. Especially since, if I got expelled in the morning, I wouldn't be talking to him in carpool anymore. I logged in.

I pecked out a Facebook update with my left hand

It was about 3
A.M.
, too late for responses. I didn't see any Evan posts, which was weird. I typed his name at the top, which took me to his page. But not to his timeline. To a privacy notice, saying he shared information only with Facebook friends.

Evan had unfriended me. On Facebook and, I guess, in life.

I logged out and logged back in as Cipher, who, fortunately, was still a friend of Evan's. His status update was:

There were sympathetic comments below, asking for more information—what personal thing? Who? What awful thing the girl did? (Nearly beat Kayla into red wobbling gelatin, then whacked both balls into Mr. Brillson's corner pocket. Just a guess.) Evan didn't say.

I scrolled down. Evan, according to the cheerful Facebook notices, had become friends with Tracie and Ashley and Sara and Lauren and Jenna. Every one of the Tracies.

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Ow.

The next morning, at carpool, Evan was sitting in the front seat, next to his mom. His backpack was in the middle of the back seat, instead of in the trunk, to make sure there was no way he'd be forced to sit next to me. Evan has about twenty pounds of books in his backpack. My heart was squished underneath.

He met my “Hi Evan” with silence. He had the sullen face down.

When we picked up Tyler, I waved my cast when I said hi. Tyler actually noticed.

“Whoa. What happened?”

“Broke my hand in a fight with Kayla Southerland. Today I find out if I'm expelled.”

“
You
were in that fight?”

“Tried not to be. Kayla picked the fight with me, and when I told her no, she said I was a quitter like my brother, because he stopped treatment.” I said it loudly enough so Evan could hear. But he just stared straight ahead.

“Wait.” Tyler leaned back in surprise. “
You're
the girl who elbowed Brillson in the balls?”

I nodded.

“Damn.”

In the rearview mirror, even Evan's mom looked alarmed. For the record, gangsta cred is totally overrated.

When we got out, I tried to talk to Evan, even holding on to his backpack with my good hand, but he shook me off. Stony-faced, he stomped away.

I turned in my apology notes, full of self-criticism: When I was trying to tell Kayla we didn't need to fight, I should have avoided insulting her. Repeatedly. After the fight started, I should have stopped myself, before even beating some of the extensive crap out of her, instead of going all rabid wolverine on her and Mr. Brillson.

Kayla, it turned out, didn't have a broken nose, but she had a black eye and bruised ribs and face. On the plus side, with the black eye and the cheek bruises fading from purple to yellow-green, she could save on eye shadow and still have a colorful, dramatic look.

I was suspended for five days, put on probation, and given a behavior contract—in addition to my already existing make-up paper requirement—but not, at least so far, expelled from school.

I was expelled from Evan's life.

He wouldn't talk to me at all.

I stood outside Rachel's door that night, took a deep breath, and knocked.

“What—” The sound was muffled, over the thumping of angry girl-pop.

I pushed the door open.

“—do
you
want?” she finished, annoyed. She was at her desk, her lips pressed into a tight frown.

“To apologize.” I sat on her bed with its red-flowered bedspread. “For being a complete bitch. All year.”

She just stared.

“Okay—for more than a year. Hassling you. Sarcasm. Being annoying . . .” I trailed off. “Sorry. Everything sucks, but I shouldn't take it out on you.”

She sat there, not moving, waiting for the “but” or follow-up attack. Finally, enough time went by so even she could think of a response. “That girl yesterday beat some sense into you?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Or it's the painkillers. If I don't hurt so bad, maybe I'll notice what I'm doing wrong. Anyway, I'm stopping. No more ripping on you.”

Rachel raised one of those perfect eyebrows and shook her head. “Right.”

“That's the plan, anyway.” I looked up at her closet shelf, at where she kept Beep's hat, behind her stuff. “I've been so awful, I'm trying to be a new me.”

“Maybe the new you could try going a week without calling me a slut.” Her voice was ragged with anger, and it caught, as if she'd start crying.

I didn't know where to look, so I looked down at my lap, where my fingers were twisting together, one set sticking out of a cast.

“So what if I have a boyfriend?” she said. “There's so little love in this house. So what if I found it with Brian? I'm
eighteen
. But you nonstop slut-shame me. You have no idea what it's like.”

Actually, I kind of did know. “I'm so, so sorry.”

The next song came on, a horrible soaring slop-ballad from Jessica-Freaking-Simpson. But I didn't rip into her musical (non) taste. It was good practice for the new me. We sat in silence except for the grating pop. Finally, Rachel glanced at the door with a “you can go now” look.

I got up and retreated, trailing more apologies, and closed the door behind me. Which at least muted the tortured mewling of Jessica Simpson.

So, no “apology accepted” from Rachel or “thank you” or “I'm sorry too, for being bitchy and hassling you for allegedly killing our brother, and leaving you to deal with family craziness while I went off with Brian.” But the point of an apology isn't to get one back. It's to say sorry. Especially if, like me, you've been a horrible, sorry excuse for a sister.

After that, I stopped fighting with Rachel. Almost completely. She'd say some bitchy thing, and instead of a verbal counterattack, I'd say “I don't want to fight.” She wouldn't believe it, so she'd plow on with some follow-on snark, which I'd just let sit. Seriously.

She'd be all waiting-for-me-to-fight-with-her worked-up, then puzzled when I wouldn't, so she'd have to hunt Mom down to start a pointless argument. Which wasn't exactly hard, but at least it wasn't me hosting all the bitchfest reunion concerts.

The morning after my five-day suspension ended wasn't a carpool day, and Evan didn't show up to walk me to school like he'd been doing for weeks. I waited anyway, and was late.

I sat in classes imagining Evan surrounded by the Tracies at lunch, escorted out of my life forever. Or him avoiding me, until his heart hardened around the idea I'd called him a liar.

In fourth-period English, while Mr. Brillson was writing on the blackboard, my morose thoughts were interrupted when Tracie passed me a note. “I'm sorry about everything. Especially after your brother died,” she whispered. The note had a phone number under a handwritten heading, “Angela hairdresser.”

“She does my hair,” Tracie whispered. “She could probably help you.”

I looked from her to the note. From the note to her. Had absolutely no idea what that meant. Was this the closest thing to trying to make up for things, on top of an apology? Was she going to stop being mean to me now, because she'd finally won—Evan was out of my life, thanks to my own efforts? Or was it some further humiliation—when I called the number I'd find it was a dog groomer?

“Uh, thanks,” I said finally, and put the paper in my pocket. I didn't even have Evan to talk to anymore, to try to sort it out. At that thought, something clicked into place. I
couldn't
let Evan leave my life. I had to talk to him before he got too far out of reach to ever pull back. So I got up, walked to the front of class, and asked Mr. Brillson for permission to leave early.

“Really?” Mr. Brillson raised his eyebrows. “As a special favor?” He looked over at his desk and my yellow folded-up apology note from my ball-bashing him the week before.

“I have to apologize to someone,” I said.

Mr. Brillson glanced at my folded note again. “Quite the month for that.”

“It's important.” I was pleading.

He gave me a flat look. “You're not going to get in another fight?”

“No.” At least, I hoped not.

He shook his head, as he was agreeing to something stupid, and knew it. “Go,” he frowned and waved me out with a shooing gesture. Quite the month for that, too.

I hurried through the hallways and skidded to a stop outside Evan's classroom as the bell rang, to ambush him coming out.

If it wasn't too late.

• • •

Evan frowned when he saw me. His eyes darted away, looking for an escape route.

“Evan,” I started. Then ran out of the right words. If there were any.

He squeezed past me to bolt down the hall. I followed. He was walking so fast I had to jog, to stay at his elbow.

“I'm not talking to you.”

“You
have
to.”

“Why?” Evan looked at my cast. “You'll beat me up if I don't?”

“No. I'll beat myself up.” We reached the cross corridor, and he was turning away, but somehow that stopped him. “I'm sorry,” I said. “Please,
please
let me explain.”

Somehow, I coaxed him outside, so we could talk not in the crowded hallway. We stood over by the concrete steps worn from skateboard grinds.

“I wasn't lying.” His voice was strained. “About my brother.”

“I know. I wasn't calling bullshit on you. I said that because what your parents did was complete B.S. Trying to make everybody forget your brother.” I waved my cast around and teared up again. “I was mad, thinking how awful it would be if Mom and Dad tried to make me forget Beep. I just . . . said it in a stupid way so you didn't understand.” I sniffed. “Which is typical.” Then I rushed on. That might be taken the wrong way. “I mean, typical that I say things in the stupidest, worst way.” I wiped my eyes with my unbroken hand.

“Oh. I thought you meant—” Evan uncrossed his arms. “I got that wrong.” Time ticked. The pause was way too long, but then he went on. “And usually I like the way you say things. You're funny. You say what you think.”

“I used to be funny. Then I got angry at the whole world. Now I'm just snide. Even when I don't want to be.
Especially
when I don't want to be.” I put my face in my hands, the fresh cast rough on my wet cheek. “I'm sorry, Evan. You're the best guy I know. Have ever known. The best guy there is.” Then I started doing one of those shoulder-shaking crying things, because once it starts, the whole miserable year comes out, and it's water-the-yard time. I sat down on the steps, crying hard, and after a while Evan sat next to me and put his arm around me, probably because guys can't take crying, and that might make it stop. Which, in a way, it did. “It's been such an awful year.”

He gave me a tissue, and I blew my nose. I looked at him. Except for chemo kids who get a million nosebleeds or are always mopping up a power burp, what guy carries tissues?

I held it up, soggy. “You come equipped for sobbing girls?”

He smiled. “I'm full of surprises.”

I looked up. This was at school, over lunch break, in plain view. “Be careful, or your friends the Tracies will tease you to death for hanging out with me again.”

“I don't mind. I could be teased for worse.”

I was trying to work that out, feeling his arm still around me. “Did you just compliment me or insult me?”

“Meant as a compliment, but it came out wrong.” He started to move his arm.

“Then you should definitely stay,” I said, and leaned back into his arm, to keep it there, because otherwise, if he moved it I'd topple backward. “I'm starting a club. For people who say things that don't come out right at first. As long as they come out all right at the end.” His arm, around me, felt wonderful.