Forbidden Sister (15 page)

I slept most of the remaining afternoon, and when I realized that Chastity would be home from school, I called her.

“Why did you do it?” I asked as soon as she said hello.

“Do what?”

“Don’t play games with me, Chastity. You told them about Roxy.”

“Oh, that. It just slipped out, and once it did, I didn’t know what to do,” she said, feigning innocence. “Why? Was it a problem? I heard you went home from school sick. What’s wrong?”

“You betrayed the wrong person,” I said, and hung up.

I went to the bathroom and washed my face with cold water. Mama came to my room just before Papa was to arrive.

“How are you?”

“I’m okay, Mama. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t like telling lies or telling you to lie, but sometimes a little twist of the truth is a nice thing to do, not for yourself but for someone else.”

“What lie, Mama?”

“If your father asks about Evan, just tell him he was a little too interested in another girl. Maybe because his father’s running for Congress, he’s a bit stuck-up right now.”

I almost laughed. Mama creating some soap-opera material?

“Okay, Mama. Who knows? Maybe that is exactly what will be happening anyway.”

She smiled, gave me a hug and a kiss, and went down to work on dinner. I sat at my computer for a moment. The anger that had been simmering inside me twisted and turned, snaking its way deeper and deeper into my brain. The evil ideas that started to take shape were shocking to me. I never thought I would even consider doing such a thing to someone. But someone like Chastity, who let her jealousy and envy do harm to her closest friend, had to be punished. She had to be made to see that her actions had consequences.

I told myself that Chastity was like a little witch, a Wiccan, and they were always warned that if they did evil to someone, it would come back at them three times.

I turned on my computer. As soon as it was ready, I went into my e-mail. I had the e-mail addresses for most of the girls I spoke with in my class. Which one would be the best for this? I wondered, and then thought the perfect irony would be to choose Carol Lee. After all, it was her mother who had called Evan’s.

Hi, Carol Lee,
I began.
I have a stunning question for you, a little puzzle for you to solve
.
Which girl in our class puts lotion on a cucumber and experiments with herself sexually while looking at erotic pictures in her copy of the Kama Sutra? Hint. She likes to eat. There’s lots more hints, too. And lots
more she does that would make your stomach turn inside out.

I hesitated, and then I clicked send.

Was it the Roxy in me that had me do it? It wasn’t hard to imagine her doing something like this and even more. Whatever, I felt a sense of satisfaction, left the computer on, and went down to help Mama with dinner.

Papa was excited when he came home. He felt as if he had inside information and had told his associates about Evan’s father running for Congress. Later in the day, they all heard the official announcement, and everyone wanted to know how he was in on it.

“I told them my daughter was seeing his son socially,” he declared with some pride.

We were all at the table. He smiled and then looked from Mama to me. I had my eyes down, and Mama’s face was always an open book.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing serious,” Mama began. “Emmie is a little annoyed with Evan at the moment.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“He’s full of himself,” I said.

“Just a young boy feeling his oats,” Mama muttered.

“Oats, huh? Flirting with other girls?”

I didn’t say anything. Sometimes it was better to let someone else fill in the blanks using his or her own imagination. That way, it seemed as if you didn’t lie so much.

“Well, you don’t worry about it,” Papa said, patting
my hand. “If he doesn’t know how lucky he is to have your attention, then he’s not the young man I thought he was. Besides, you’re too young to be having love problems.”

I nodded. “Yes, Papa. You’re right,” I said. I gave him the best smile I could muster, and he quickly changed the subject.

As soon as Mama and I finished cleaning up, I went to my room and saw that Carol Lee had bitten on my e-mail. In big block letters, there was a response.

You’re kidding. Tell me more about it.

After having dinner, talking with Papa, and listening to him and Mama talk about some of their future plans for all of us, I had lost a good deal of my passion for revenge. Suddenly, it seemed juvenile and quite unimportant. I had started something, however, and I had to do something to end it, at least for now.

It’s too disgusting to write about,
I told her, and shut off my computer.

Despite what had occurred between us at school, I still clung to the hope that Evan might call. By now, he probably had heard I had left sick, and I thought he would at least care about that and call to see how I was, but the phone never rang.

I tried to put on a pleasant face for Papa in the morning, even though this sense of dread washed over me almost the moment I awoke. School loomed before me like a place of gloom and doom. I was very nervous about how the other students would treat me. Would they all be laughing and hiding their gleeful smiles? Of
course, I wondered if Evan would even look in my direction. I didn’t care about Chastity. Whatever would happen to her was well deserved.

I walked so slowly to school that I was almost late and had to rush from my locker to homeroom. As soon as I entered, I could see that my e-mail to Carol Lee had already taken effect. Chastity was sulking in her seat and avoided looking in my direction.

I took my seat. When the bell rang, Carol Lee and Cathy Starling were at my side almost before I could rise out of my seat.

“We want you to join us at lunch today,” Carol Lee said.

“We’ve got a lot to tell you,” Cathy added as an incentive. “Apparently, you’re not the only one she’s told these disgusting things.”

That surprised me. Was there someone else Chastity had been courting to be her best friend behind my back?

“And you have a lot more to tell us,” Carol Lee reminded me.

Their eyes twinkled with glee as they shot off ahead of me. I looked back and saw Chastity walking slowly with her head down.

Patty Marcus nudged me and nodded in Chastity’s direction. “They really gave her a hard time this morning. Did you hear?”

“No, I was almost late today. What did they do?”

“Someone put a bag of cucumbers in her locker with a disgusting note,” she said, laughing. “Everyone’s talking about it now.”

At one point during our morning classes, I thought Chastity was on the verge of apologizing to me. I imagined she’d heard the other girls talk about the confab that was going to take place in the cafeteria. I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to add anything to what I had already revealed. I knew I should have felt good about the result I had already gotten, but I didn’t. Who really wins when two friends damage each other? It all made me sick, and it was beside the point, anyway.

The point, which no one but me would understand, was that Roxy was still very much in my life, whether she wanted to be or not and whether I wanted her to be or not. And there wasn’t very much that either of us could do about it. How I would go about dealing with it was all that mattered now.

The first thing I did when I went to lunch was look to see where Evan was sitting. He was with some of the boys in his class, and they were sitting way off to the right. I stood for a moment to see if he would look my way. He did, but he turned right back to one of his friends as if he had never met me and had no idea who I was. Right now, it seemed our short romance had been nothing more than one of my fantasies.

What did all of those beautiful words he had said really mean? I was a discovery.
Je t’aime. I love you
. Was spending words like spending pennies? How much worse would I feel now if I had gone further with him in his room? How do you know when a relationship is solid and significant? How did Mama and Papa know? Was it something so special that only
a very few ever have it? Was this something Roxy had realized? Did she decide to do what she was doing because she knew she would never have a relationship, never fall in love?

How could Evan tell me I was special, enjoy my company, be proud to be seen with me, and want us to be a couple one day and not even give me a second look the day after?

Maybe most important for me was the realization that I didn’t see this failure in him. I was naive. Why wasn’t there a class in school that would teach us how to recognize sincerity? Wouldn’t that be the most important class of all?

I decided not to sit with Carol Lee and the other girls. I sat at another table with girls in the ninth grade, who didn’t know much about me or what was happening. They were surprised. I just smiled and started eating. It took Carol Lee a few moments to realize it, but when she did, she came over quickly. I felt her standing there but kept eating.

“What are you doing? I told you to join our table,” she said.

I paused and looked past her at her table. The girls there suddenly resembled starving dogs, hungry for my pornographic gossip. I had no doubt that the pack would turn on any one of them if it meant they could enjoy some erotic pleasure. Chastity was just the flavor of the day. Gazing around a little more, I didn’t see her. Had she done what I had done and gone to the nurse’s office to get herself excused from the rest of the school day? Unlike her, I didn’t realize any new
pleasure from the thought. I was actually beginning to feel sorry for her, despite what she had done. But I always had felt sorry for her.

“I really don’t want to hear any more about her,” I said.

“Well, what about what more you promised to tell us? You said it was too disgusting to write about. So?”

“I didn’t promise,” I said, and continued eating my sandwich.

“You know you’re really as sick as she is,” she said, her face reddening.

I imagined she had assured them that I had promised to give them some more shocking information. She was like their star reporter.

“I know why you wrote that e-mail,” she continued, still practically on top of me. “You wanted to get back at her. You used me. Well, I did it, so now you owe me. I want to hear all about your sister, too, and I mean right now.”

She stamped her foot like a little girl throwing a tantrum. The ninth-grade girls at the table all stopped eating. They were mesmerized by the scene being played out before them. Other students at other tables were starting to look in our direction. Suddenly, I saw Chastity way in the rear, sitting with two girls who were about as popular as the measles. She was looking my way, too, probably terrified of what else I was going to reveal.

“Well?”

I folded up the remainder of my sandwich, put it back on the tray, and picked up the tray.

“Good,” she said, and turned victoriously toward her table and her friends.

When I rose, however, I turned in the opposite direction and walked toward the refuse slot in the cafeteria wall.

“Where are you going?” Carol Lee shouted after me.

I didn’t look back. I deposited my leftovers and my tray and walked out of the cafeteria. There was still a good fifteen minutes to the lunch hour, so I went outside. The day had turned gloomy, overcast. There was that familiar late-fall chill in the air now, the harbinger of winter. I hugged myself and walked slowly around the building.

I hate being here now,
I told myself. I was strongly tempted by the urge just to walk away from the building and spend the rest of the day wandering about the city, but if I did that, Papa would definitely be told and what happened would be revealed. Mama would be so disappointed in me. It all made me feel trapped. How could my life be anything but miserable? And whose fault was that?

It’s your fault, Roxy,
I whispered.
You’re like a rock dropped in a pond causing ripples to go out wider and wider. You’re like a scream that echoes and echoes.
I hadn’t seen her for nearly ten years, but I suddenly hated her anyway.
I don’t know why I ever wanted to meet you. Papa was right to throw you out. I wish he had thrown you out before I was born so I wouldn’t have any memories of you at all.

Raging like this, even though it was only in my mind, seemed to bring me relief, but when I saw my
reflection in a classroom window, I didn’t like what I saw. I saw someone full of venom and fury, someone made so ugly by her sick rage that she was almost unrecognizable. I despised Chastity and loathed the girls in my class. Once so attracted to and enamored of Evan, I was now furious with him. The sight of him, even the mere thought of him, was revolting. I felt as though I would never smile again, but I had no idea how or why that feeling would become even stronger. It was lying out there, waiting for me like some hungry tiger. It had been watching me for a long time, stalking me, anticipating its opportunity.

“Emmie,” I heard, and turned around to see Mrs. Morris coming out of the building. Did she think I was sick again? Was she going to call Mama to come get me? Had some of the students told her I hadn’t finished my lunch and had practically run out of the cafeteria?

“Yes, Mrs. Morris.”

“I want you to come inside, come to my office.”

“I’m all right, Mrs. Morris. I just wanted to get some air and—”

“I’m not concerned about your health right now, Emmie. Please do as I ask.”

“Why?”

She stood there looking at me. “Dr. Sevenson asked me to find you. Please do as I ask,” she said.

I followed her back into the building. She waited at the door and then started down the hallway without saying another word.

“What is this about?”

“Your mother called and asked that you meet me at my office. She’s on her way,” she told me.

“Why?”

“I think it’s better that your mother tell you,” she said.

It was as if my body knew the answer before the words entered my ears. I could feel my heart tighten like a hand into a fist and the icy cold rush through my veins. My legs weakened, and my lungs seemed to stop calling for air. Nevertheless, I kept up with Mrs. Morris. When we arrived at her office, she told me to sit on one of the beds and wait, and then, as if I did have a contagious disease, one that frightened even her, she hurried away. I sat there silently, my heart thumping.