Titans (22 page)

It’s been a long time since I spent a morning at home, so the day after the gala, I do just that. The problem is no one is there to spend time
with
. There’s a note on the counter from Mom to Zara saying she’s running to the store, and telling her to clean up her room. I frown at the note, unhappy that my mom is leaving my ten-year-old sister at home alone. Our phone got cut off six weeks ago. What would Zara do if there was an emergency?

When I see that my dad and Dani are also gone, I head to Zara’s room. She’s asleep in her twin-sized bed, a hand-me-down blanket covered in smiling lions pulled to her chin.

“Zara,” I whisper. But she doesn’t respond.

Rags wants me at the track by noon, no exceptions, and I really wish I could hang with Zara before I leave. But I also don’t want to wake her, so I head to my room and crawl in bed too. My chest is hollow as I stare at my older sister’s cold pillow. How much has she been here the last few weeks? And what about my dad? What’s happened to the man whose pride hangs on his ability to provide for his family?

I remember a time when our house was full. When me, Dani, and Zara finger-painted on clean sheets of paper in Grandpa’s living room, and then proceeded to paint his bald head at his request. He was a paying customer, after all. Dad had Mom on his lap, and said he’d only let her get up if she made cookies. With chocolate chips. And M&Ms.

We were the Sullivans, and where there was one, there were five more on their way.

I attempt to fall back asleep, trying to recover from my late night with Magnolia and Hart. But I miss my family. I miss my broken, warped, split-down-the-middle family, and I wish we could sit on the couch and eat fried eggs and bicker about the necessity of cable.

I’d argue right now simply to hear their voices. To hear my mom’s quiet opinions and Dani’s passive-aggressive ones. To watch my dad’s face pinch with impatience, and Zara roll her eyes and sigh with exaggerated annoyance. I want all of that. I want to be sandwiched between it even if it’s the best we’ve got at this point.

I just want it in this house.

And I wanted a little piece of it this morning.

As if by some divine miracle, the bedroom window slides open. My heart leaps and I bolt upright. I don’t care how ridiculous the smile is on my face. I can’t hide how happy I am that Dani chose this exact moment to sneak in for a change of clothes or a shower or whatever it is she needs.

She’s sliding her tanned legs through the window—good, solid Sullivan legs—when her dress snags on the frame. She curses under her breath, and I glance away as her yellow summer dress hitches to her waist. But not before I see it.

A green-and-yellow bruise circles her left hip, as glorious as it is grotesque. It’s almost a perfect circle with swirls of deep color, like I’m looking at planet Earth from outer space. If I concentrate hard enough, maybe I can spot our brown clapboard house from my rocket ship.

I lunge to my feet and pull her through the rest of the way. She gasps with surprise that I’m actually home. But it’s me who’s shocked. I hold on to her arm, and even when she shakes it and calls me a slug and tells me to get off her, I don’t let go. Because I see them now. Small, round bruises dotting her wrists—the meteors in her galaxy of pain.

“Who did this?” I ask.

She pulls away at last. “What are you blubbering about?”

“You have bruises all over you, Dani. Who did this?” The realization hits me hard, square between the eyes. “Was it Jason?”

For a moment, it looks as if she’ll deny it. Say she fell a hundred different ways, and my, oh my, isn’t she clumsy? But she doesn’t. She only purses her lips and turns toward the ceiling and says something so clichéd it actually hurts my freaking
teeth
. “He didn’t know what he was doing. We went out with his friends and had too much to drink.”

“So he’s allowed to hurt you because he was drunk?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

Dani strides away, goes to her closet and rifles for a suddenly important piece of clothing. “Chill with the melodrama, okay? I yelled at him when it should have waited until morning, and we both did and said things we shouldn’t have.” Dani’s voice lowers. “He already apologized like a thousand times.”

I cringe. “Do you know how you sound? You sound like Mom, making excuses for a man who should know better. But Dad would never do this. He would never hurt Mom.”

Dani spins around. “Dad hurts Mom every single day, Astrid. Every day he snaps at her. Every day he makes her feel uncomfortable in her own home. Every day he pushes her, and us, further away. He didn’t keep Grandpa safe, and he won’t keep us safe, either. He’s the one screwing everything up! Jason can keep
me
safe, though. He messed up once, but every other day he treats me like royalty. And when we lose this house, and you know we will, Jason will put a roof over my head and food in my stomach and he’ll love me out loud. And he won’t gamble that away either.” Dani turns away. There’s the ghost of red lipstick smudged across her mouth. “He thinks I can get my GED and go to college. Says he’ll help me pay for it. I can’t lose that.”

I listen to her speech and dismiss it at once. “You’ve got to tell someone what happened. We’ve got to tell Dad.”

That does it. Tears fill Dani’s eyes, crest over mascara-laden lashes. “If you tell him, or anyone, I’ll leave with Jason. I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again.”

Now I’m crying too, because I know she isn’t bluffing. And because for the first time, I see I’m not the only one who’s lived in fear of losing my small sense of stability. I don’t want to lose my sister too.

“Why are you guys being so loud?” a new voice asks.

When I see Zara standing in the doorway, the morning sun granting her an ethereal glow, I wipe the tears from my face. Plaster on a winning, reassuring smile. “Hey, there you are, sleepyhead.”

Dani turns her back to Zara—more camouflage, more denial that anything bad has happened under the Sullivan roof.

Zara steps farther into the room. “I heard you guys fighting.”

“We argue because we share a room,” I lie. “It happens. You want pancakes? I’ll make them with applesauce like you like.”

“I’m not stupid.” Zara’s cheeks redden. “I know what’s going on.”

“Be quiet, Zara,” Dani says.

“Don’t tell me that!” Zara’s yelling at Dani now, her small hands balled into fists. “I know you basically live with your boyfriend, because you’re never here when I wake up. I know Mom and Dad fight, because I hear them.” She looks at me now. “And I know you’re more interested in flirting with Hart Riley than being here.” When my face contorts, she says, “Yeah, I know about your stupid boyfriend. Mom gets the
Titan Enquirer
and I see the pictures of you.” I want to correct her, but she plunges onward. “You two both have a place to run away to, but I’m stuck here. I hear every time Mom and Dad argue about the house, and about where we’ll go if we lose it. I hear when Mom leaves in the middle of the night, and when Dad snores from the living room couch. Were either of you two here when the guy came to take our car last night? No, just me. You were probably both—”

“Wait, what? Who came to get the car, Zara?”

“They took Mom and Dad’s car,” she repeats. “They’re using it to pay for the house or something.”

The room spins, and I hardly hear whatever else Zara says, though I want to listen so badly. Right now, she needs me to be her sister, but my mind clicks to survival mode the same way Padlock switched to autopilot last night. If we don’t have a car, and we don’t have a house—where will we go? At least last time we had the backseat to curl up in on hard nights. We had air conditioning and a little heat if we could afford the fuel. What will we do without our vehicle to fall back on?

Zara must see the change in my face, because she starts to cry in earnest. “See? That’s what happens when you go away.”

A lump forms in my throat. “I didn’t go away. I’m right here.”

But when I reach for her, she jerks backward. “You’re
never
here anymore. You don’t care about us at all. All you care about is your stupid horse.”

“That’s not true. I love you, Zara. And Mom and Dad. And Dani too.” I glance at my older sister, who’s chewing her thumbnail. She doesn’t meet my gaze. “Everything I’m doing at the track is to try and save this family. If I win, we can stay here. You can keep going to your school and stay with your friends. Mom and Dad won’t fight anymore, and Dani can come home.”

This time when I look at Dani, she stares at me intently.

“I have to worry about saving our house right now, but after this summer is over, you’ll see me every day.” I bend down so Zara and I are eye to eye. “You understand?”

Zara glowers at the ground, but I don’t miss the way her lower lip trembles. She mumbles something under her breath I don’t catch. When I ask her to repeat it, she fills her lungs and yells, “You’re just like Dad! All you care about is gambling and money!”

I straighten, stunned by her words. Hurt rains over my body, slips into my cracks, makes a home for itself in my heart. I don’t know how to feel about what she said. Do I defend myself and argue that my father and I are nothing alike? Or apologize and admit that maybe we are? That maybe the man I believed emotionally abandoned us is simply doing the same thing I am.

Trying to save our home.

Trying to piece our family back together.

Trying to shoulder the burden himself so the rest of us can sleep at night.

That kind of stress could make even the most cheerful person irritable. It could make them distant in their constant quest to solve a difficult problem. It could make a man like the one my mother married into one she escapes at night in favor of other people’s gardens. Because him she can’t change. Him she can’t get to open up and return to her and thrive, but hydrangeas and delphiniums and coralbells—those she can.

I think about this, but I also recall what Magnolia said to me at the track. That I’m putting in effort, whereas my father simply sits and
hopes
with his gambling. We may seem alike, and perhaps in a way we are. But I’d never put Zara in the position she’s in now. Almost homeless. Almost destitute.

“Zara, listen to me—”

But she interrupts me the same way I did her. “Are you going to practice today with that man?”

I know what I should say. I should tell her absolutely not. That I won’t leave her when she’s this upset. But how much more upset will she be if she doesn’t have her bed to sleep in? If she loses her place by the window where she reads the magazines I keep beneath my mattress? If she loses her friend Derrick, who walks with her to school and will probably become her first crush?

I can’t look at her when I respond. “For a little while, yes. Because I have to. For you. For all of us.”

Zara wipes her face and crosses her arms over her chest. In this moment, she looks a lot like a little girl pretending to be a grown woman. “Sorry. I miss you. That’s all.”

I reach for her again, but she turns and pads toward her room. She’s trying to forgive me for not being around. She understands what I’m trying to do. But she’s still a ten-year-old who’s tired of living invisibly within a family of five.

Dani pulls her sundress toward her knees and chews the inside of her cheek. Finally, she stands and returns to the closet. She rifles in the back and finds what she’s looking for. She walks over and pushes her hand out in a silent offering.

I glance down and see a pair of black Oakley sunglasses. When I don’t immediately take them, she shoves them into my stomach.

“Don’t be too proud,” she says. “You can use them when you practice or whatever.”

I take the sunglasses, but continue staring at my feet. I feel suddenly childlike standing before my older sister, tears pooling at the corners of my eyes. Dani and I have always shared a room, and it was her bed I sought when thunderstorms rolled in, or when I’d spy on the horror movies Mom and Dad rented. She never complained when I crawled beneath her covers. In fact, I think she may have enjoyed it. Looking back, I can’t remember how that ended: if she said I was too old for such things, or if I stopped on my own.

“You don’t need them?” I mumble.

Dani waves away the question. “Jason gave them to me.”

Recalling the bruises, I raise my head to insist we talk to Mom and Dad. Or to someone. But the look in her eyes stops me cold.

“Remember what I said before, okay? I mean it.” Dani passes by on her way to the bathroom. Or maybe to leave through the front door. That’d be a first. When I turn to object, she’s staring at me. “That race thing … I knew about it, you know.”

I don’t respond, because I wasn’t certain she did. When Dani is with Jason, it’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

“You think you can win?” she asks.

The hope in her voice is nearly my undoing.

“I’ll win,” I say.

I wait for Dani to respond. To say something profound. Or to reassure me it doesn’t matter either way. But she doesn’t. She just nods, and then turns to go.

A few seconds later, I hear the sound of the shower running.