Ink Is Thicker Than Water (6 page)

I definitively do not, so I keep my mouth shut. I sort of thought everyone else would, too, but this isn’t like a typical English class.
Everyone
is yelling out stuff about scholarships and the lack of sports teams and SATs and the new green policy (I look guiltily at my stack of toilet paper sheets), until it hits me that Adelaide has written every writer’s name on the board with his or her story next to it and every photographer’s name next to an assignment.
Kelly B
just sits there alone.

“Kellie? Thoughts?”

“You spelled my name wrong,” I say, which does make everyone laugh, but also makes me a big jerk. “No, sorry, I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

“You don’t have
any
ideas?” I guess me not brimming with thoughts like she undoubtedly did constantly is to be pitied. Maybe it is, to genius kids like these, but I’m lucky to have a good one every once in a while. And I’d hoped that’d be enough to do this. “We’ll talk more afterward, okay?”

I don’t like the sound of that, but after she gets through the rest of business, I do hang around while most of the other writers file out. “Um, sorry I didn’t—”

“Hang on.” She pushes past me to lean over a guy’s shoulder while he’s messing around with the layout on some technical-looking computer program. “Be sure to add Kellie to the masthead, and be sure to get her name spelled right, okay?”

He grunts in agreement, and Adelaide’s attention is back on me. “Why don’t you spend tonight thinking about topics and drop me an email later? I’m sure you’ll get better at thinking on the fly soon.”

I shrug but accept the business card she takes out of her purse. Who has their own
business cards
?

“My mom says cards are great for networking,” Adelaide says with—if I’m not completely off target—maybe a little eye-roll at herself.

I glance down at the card in my hand.

Adelaide Johansson

The Ticknor Voice, Editor-in-Chief

St. Louis Young Feminists, Founder

Blogger: www.adelaide-doesnt-lament.com

Contact: [email protected] or 314.555.9472

Okay, I guess there’s a reason Adelaide has these. Besides networking. I still think she’s an overachiever extraordinaire. The overachievers all seemed to be having fun today, though, and it was cool—well, a milder form of cool, I guess—seeing a roomful of people my own age getting real things done with barely any help or guidance from Jennifer. So considering that, and that Kaitlyn is suddenly maybe drawn to the kind of people and activities we both used to hate, right now there seem to be a lot of fates worse than overachieving.

Chapter Five

When I get home after newspaper, Sara and Finn are hanging out in the living room, reading Finn’s favorite book about a friendly gang of monkeys. I’m not sure today was actually that weird, but I still feel relief at seeing such a familiar scene.

“Hey, Finn, can you read by yourself for a few minutes?” Sara asks him. He agrees, and Sara pulls me into the hallway where we can still keep an eye on him but kind of have privacy. We’ve had lots of conversations right here for that reason.

“What’s up?” I ask.

Sara takes a deep breath. “I’m meeting her.”

“Oh my God, seriously?” I ask. “I mean, obviously seriously, sorry. When?”

“Tonight. Which is crazy, I know. She asked when, and for some reason I said tonight, and she said that was fine, and…now it’s happening.” Sara shakes her head. “I can’t believe I
talked
to her. We had this very normal conversation.”

“That’s good,” I say. “That means meeting her will be fine.”

“I hope so.”

“I’ll go with you,” I say, which is stupid because Sara is older and braver and smarter than me. “If you want.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be okay.”

“Do you want me to text you a few minutes after you get there? I know on TV when they do that it’s on blind dates, but maybe you’d feel better? If it’s super awkward, you can say I’m dying and leave.”

“Okay, sure.” She pats my hand, a total Mom move. “I should start getting ready. Do you mind watching Finn?”

Of course I never do, so I pick up where she left off in the monkey saga until Mom’s home. Sara hasn’t emerged from her room, so I head up to check on her. It’s not that Sara has ever really needed me, but since I’ve needed her a billion times for help with homework, rides the year she could drive and I couldn’t, and venting sessions about Dad, I owe her.

I knock on her door, and she leans out, still clad in her uniform. “I have no idea what I should wear. Nothing’s right for this.”

“You should consult a guide,” I say. “
How to Impress Your
—”

“Stop being funny,” she says with an edge to her voice. Of course Sara and I fight sometimes, because that’s how it goes with anyone you spend a lot of forced time with, but this edge is something new. It feels cold and dangerous, like the expensive knives we’re not allowed to use unless Mom or Russell’s around. “Unless you have an actual suggestion, I’d rather be alone right now.”

I don’t have an actual suggestion, but I do want to help, edge or not. So I riffle through her closet while trying to look like I am in possession of A Plan. Mom fakes knowing what she’s doing all the time, so this should be in my blood.

“Sorry for snapping,” she says. “I’m just—”

Just that fast the danger is gone and the metaphorical knife is back in its metaphorical drawer. “I would be, too. It’s okay.”

I reach the brown dress Mom found at the vintage shop down the street from The Family Ink and just knew would look perfect on Sara. Of course Mom was right, not that it’s tough dressing a tall, thin, with just enough boobs and hips to still qualify for
hourglass figure
status girl.

Sara slips into the dress and surveys herself in her mirror for only a moment before taking her brown flats out of their place in her shoe cubby. “Yeah? This is good?”

“You look great.”

“You always think I look great; you don’t count.” But she smiles, just slightly, enough to catch from her reflection in her mirror. “Who knows what she’s going to think?”

“She’ll think you’re awesome,” I say, because how couldn’t she?

Sara hugs me, and then we both laugh because Mom’s the mushy one, never us. “I’ll see you later, Kell.”

“Don’t forget, I’ll text you.”

She’s out of her room and into the hallway already. “Sure.” She races down the stairs and sort of sidesteps Mom, who is waiting in the front room. “I have to go now. If there’s traffic—”

“I just wanted to wish you good luck, sweetie.” Mom kisses Sara’s forehead, no mean feat given that Sara is four inches taller than both Mom and me. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Mom,” Sara says in a strained voice. “Don’t be proud for this. See you later.”

Sara lets herself out, and I try to pretend I haven’t been spying on them. The jig is up when Finn runs into the room wearing a Superman cape with a Spider-Man mask and barrels right at me.

“You are one confused superhero,” I say.

“I’m hungry.”

“Me, too,” I say with a look to Mom.

“Let’s just order pizza,” she says. “Kell-belle, call for the regular, would you?”

I do, one supreme and one veggie-no-cheese-vegan-crust, and sit down at the kitchen table with my homework. Mostly I think about Sara and her biological mother as well as a possible topic for my newspaper piece. Of course the former is endlessly more interesting than the latter. I can’t believe that before today I didn’t spend more time thinking about this woman who’d given my sister life. Your family is who you come home to, sure, but does that mean it isn’t anyone else, either?

A few minutes later, I remember my promise to text Sara and send it right away (
here’s ur excuse if u need it! i have the plague! also consumption!
). That’s bad because there I am, worrying on my sister’s behalf and stressing out on my own, and holding the phone with Oliver’s message. By now I’ve probably read
Good seeing you Friday. Is the fish still singing?
three hundred times. And so that’s my excuse for how it happens. I can’t be held accountable for hitting reply, typing,
unfortunately it is. i’d put a hit out on it, but i can’t break my brother’s heart.
I almost hit send, but stop. Not to delete (would have probably been the smart move) but to add,
how r u??
(Definitely the dumb move.)

And send.

“I forgot to ask.” Mom takes the chair across from me. “How was your first newspaper meeting?”

“I don’t know if I’m smart enough to be there.”

“Kellie, baby—”

“Well, not
smart enough
, exactly. Like the right kind of smart, I guess is what I mean. Mom, seriously, you should see how fast these other kids think. They’ve got millions of ideas, and I just wrote this goofy paper my teacher liked. I figured I’d be okay not fitting in with all the overachievers, but ugh, now I actually sort of want to be there, and I’m afraid they’ll fire me.”

“They take self-esteem really seriously at Ticknor,” Mom says with a smile. Our smiles are exactly the same; I’ve always liked that. Why didn’t I realize sooner that maybe Sara wanted to see her smile somewhere else, too? “Even if they want to, they won’t fire you.”

“Shut up.” But I laugh as my phone beeps. “It’s probably Sara. I did the whole thing where I texted her so if it’s awkward she can say it’s an emergency and leave.”

“I don’t know how you could ever doubt that you’re smart enough when you come up with good plans like that all the time.”

I roll my eyes and then totally drop my phone when I see that the message isn’t from Sara at all, but Oliver.
Good, classes are killer. You should call me.

Call him? That’s a big step. I’m barely out of texting territory with anyone. I could just
call him
? Hear his voice over the phone? And he
wants that?
Am I ready for this? Is this another thing I want to be ready for but I’m not? Why am I asking myself so many questions?

“Is she all right?” Mom’s voice is immediately in Good Mom Mode. She picks up my phone, since I’d flung it in her direction, and I can’t move quickly enough to stop her. “Who’s Oliver?”

I literally leap across the table, getting a salt shaker to the hip, and grab it from her. “No one.”

Mom gives me this grin that’s new to be directed at me as she carefully sweeps up the spilled salt with her hands. I’ve seen it before, though, always in the context of Sara and Dexter. “Oliver McAuley?”

“I have homework. Call me down when the pizza gets here.” I shove my phone in my pocket and run up to my room, taking the steps two at a time. Instead of following instinct number one and texting Sara again to make sure she was okay or following instinct number two and replying to Oliver—or even
calling him
—I get out my computer and stare at a blank Word document. There has to be at least one idea in me, doesn’t there?

The blank page is still glaring at me when Mom calls me for dinner, and I say a little prayer as I run downstairs that she won’t bring up Oliver in front of Russell and Finn. Or, really, at all.

“How did your newspaper meeting go?” Russell asks as I sit down.

“I’m not sure I’m right for it, no matter what she says,” I reply with a look to Mom that I hope will ward off her knee-jerk defenses of me.

“Don’t say things like that, Kellie.” Mom cuts some of the vegan pizza into smaller slices for Finn. Poor kid being brought up to think it is perfectly acceptable for pizza to lack cheese.

“Buddy, I think you should take that off before you try to eat,” Russell says to Finn, but none of us can wrestle the mask off his face, which means within minutes the Spider-Man mask is covered with pizza sauce. Before Finn was born, a lot of stuff grossed me out, but having a little kid around means you get immune to all sorts of grossness at the dinner table and elsewhere.

I sort of figure by the time we’re cleaning up from dinner (Mom and I take the kitchen duties while Russell takes Finn upstairs for a bath), Sara would be home. From the way Mom keeps peeking through the red curtains framing the window above the kitchen sink, I guess she does, too. “What do you think it’ll be like? For Sara?”

Mom sort of shrugs as she goes on with loading the dishwasher. “Your sister’s one of the bravest people I know. If anyone could get through this without trauma…”

“It’s true. But does it hurt your feelings?”

Mom looks over her shoulder at me. “Why would it, Kell-belle?”

“I don’t know…you’re her mom. Maybe it would feel weird that she has…not another mom, exactly, just…”

“I love that you’re always looking out for all of us,” Mom tells me. “But, no. I’ve always felt so grateful I was given this opportunity to be Sara’s mom. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that way about you and Finn, too, though it’s slightly different. Obviously, I’ve always known she and Sara might reach out to each other at some point, and I wanted that for Sara if she did, too.”

“You’re a good mom,” I say without really thinking. Of course she gets all teary-eyed and hugs me, and I tell her she can experiment with my hair because it’s the only thing I can think to do for her.

“I forgot to check my phone,” I say as Mom uses a little brush to paint streaks in my hair. “What if Sara texted back?”
What if Oliver texted again? What if he called and his voice is on my voice mail?

“Want me to get it for you, sweetie?”

I do, but there aren’t any messages when Mom brings it to me. “I hope she’s okay,” I say.

“I’m sure she is.” Mom dabs on a bit more color before stepping back and studying me. “Let it sit for a half-hour, then rinse, then tell me what you think.”

“I’ll set a timer,” I say. “I should try to work on my newspaper thing. Or some of my other homework.”

“Good girl.” She kisses my cheek and pushes me to the doorway. “I’ll clean up here. Let me see your hair when it’s dry, okay?”

I get through most of my homework (though I’ll have to request help from Sara on my Fundamentals of Geometry) while texting Chelsea and Mitchell, before rinsing my hair. For once Mom’s lack of planning leads to something pretty amazing. She’s deepened my natural blond hair but made it lighten toward the ends. It makes me look less like one of those girls who’s trying really hard to be different and more like I maybe just am.

Unfortunately, even with awesome hair and a backpackful of (mostly) completed homework, I still am at a loss for a column idea. I take my laptop and Adelaide’s business card to bed with me to type up a fast email.

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: sorry

Adelaide,

I’ve been brainstorming all of tonight and can’t think of ANYTHING to write about. Can you just run my cafeteria paper this week?