From Where I Watch You (23 page)

The Clarks down the street asked me before I went to camp if I’d babysit. If I’m busy for the rest of the summer then I don’t have time to see Jen and Gaby, and I don’t have to tell them about what happened. I can also stay away from my family as much as possible.

Mom raises her glass and her eyebrows and starts giggling at my dad for some reason. Kellen and Nick don’t even look up from their plates.

Mom drinks her wine and Dad uses his corncob to point toward my sister and Nick. “Well you two sure are quiet tonight. Not hungry?”

After a few moments Dad puts down his corn and wipes his mouth. “Kell Bells, don’t you think that’s funny? Your sister spent three weeks at camp and learned to frost a cake.” He leans over to Kellen and whispers something, nudging her and laughing.

Kellen doesn’t laugh.

Dad looks at me. Some of the humor slowly drains from his face and he stuffs another bite into his mouth, looking around at all of us.

We are all picking at our food, and my sister and her new boyfriend have not made eye contact with anyone since I sat down.

Nick lifts his glass to drink.

I am going to throw up.

“Kara?” Mom says.

I stare into my plate, which becomes blurrier by the second.

“Well,” Mom says, “obviously camp did nothing for you and your attitude.”

Suddenly Kellen bolts out of her chair and runs down the deck stairs. Nick mumbles something like “Sorry” to Mom and follows my sister.

My parents stare in surprise after them for a moment and then they both look at me, because I’m to blame.

I KEPT AWAY FROM
Kellen all summer—easy enough because she was always out with Nick. She broke it off with him at the end of August before she went off to college. I only know because I heard her tell her friend over the phone that she wanted a fresh start. I never saw Nick again.

The last time I saw Kellen was when she climbed into her car and left for college. That Halloween she drank so much at a party that she fell into a pool, bumped her head, and drowned.

I always thought it was an odd way for her to go.

23.
Half lengthwise and scrape.

..........................................................

I land in Seattle with the rain pelting the little plane window. It’s saying, fuck you, Kara, you’re stuck here forever.

Mom and Charlie sent too many texts to count while I flew home. I turn my phone back off and shove it in my coat pocket when the red light above the baggage carousel starts whirling, warning that my suitcase is coming.

I leave without it.

When I get to the bottom of the escalator, someone is standing there.

“Hey, Kar,” Noelle says.

I say nothing. But I notice she’s wearing a ponytail, which she never does, and she’s wearing the blue pearl earrings I got her for her birthday last year. Earrings she said she’d never wear because she said they looked like “a snake’s balls.”

“Um, Charlie’s working. He told me what time your flight got in. I’m sorry, Kar. Really. I feel like such a bitch for what I said and I’m sorry. Mason’s out in the car.”

I nod.

When we get to the car, Mason hops out to hug me. He takes my luggage. For the whole ride home we listen to music, and neither Mason nor Noelle asks me about the contest. Thank God. Noelle only turns around once—to ask if I want Taco Bell or McDonald’s or anything.

  

AT 10:30
P.M.
I
unlock the café door and trudge through the semi-dark, wondering when Mom will pop out to kill me, or ground me for life, or just ask me to pray with her and tell me “I told you so.” Probably some combination. I don’t care because I can’t feel worse than I already do. When I reach the door at the top of the stairs, I hear the TV.

Mom lets out a soft sob and rushes over, pulling me to her before I can even shut the door. Her hand is in my hair and she whispers, “Thank you for bringing my baby girl home safe.”

I say nothing. I feel nothing.

She gives me a last squeeze and then pushes me back to look at me. Her brow crinkles into a frown and I see how puffy and red her eyes are. “I did not raise my daughters to be so deceptive. How could you do that to me? Do you know what I’ve been through?” Her voice shakes.

“Kara, if it weren’t for Charlie I would’ve called the police. You could’ve been a little more sensitive to what I’d go through considering what happened with your sister.” She smoothes her palm over my forehead. “Are you okay?”

She becomes a blur.

“Oh, honey, you lost, didn’t you?”

I swallow and wipe my eyes fast. “I lost. Got second place. Happy?”

Mom smiles and tucks hair behind my ear. “Well, second place is nothing to get upset about, with so many contestants! You should be proud of yourself.” It’s the worst thing she could possibly say.

I rush off to my room, slamming the door and locking it. She knocks as I crawl into bed in my clothes.

“Kara, you’re grounded for a month.”

Here we go, I think.

“You will be in church with me every Sunday morning so you can pray and ask forgiveness for your deception. I hope you will soften your heart the next time you speak to me.”

And that’s it. I was right about what she’d do, but of course I was. I turn over and pull the quilt over my head. I have nothing left. There is nothing to think about, nothing to look forward to, and nothing to dream about. And my mom, who is supposed to be on my side, doesn’t even care about the only thing that is important to me.

MOM DOESN’T HASSLE ME
when I stay in my room for the whole next day. I skip school because the note I forged said that I’d still be absent anyway. Monday night I come out of my room to pee and run into my suitcase. The airport must have delivered it.

I forgot about charging my phone. When I turn it on the next morning there aren’t any new messages from Charlie, and I’m sure by now he knows I lost, and I should talk to him, but I can’t bring myself to face him.

INSTEAD OF GOING TO
school, I take the bus downtown, where I blend in with the shoppers and workers and runaways. Every shop that has anything to do with cooking or baking stands as a brick and steel reminder of what I lost. I head to a corner in the bookstore and stare at a pile of magazines.

Too many people around me are happy and I can’t stand it. When I’m ready to leave, buzzing on the cheap drip coffee I drank all day, a red hoodie catches my eye.

Kellen peeks from behind a shelf and then she’s gone.

I don’t even care enough anymore to want to find her.

ON THE WAY HOME,
I stop at my old house. Winter has stripped away the layers of my hiding place, but I climb into my old tree, not giving a shit if anyone catches me today. I sit there, letting my legs dangle from the tree and staring at Kellen’s window.

Seven-Year-Old Carrot

“Carrot, let’s go, he’s coming!” Kellen runs out to the street with me close behind. She is eleven and I’m seven.

“Kellen, I don’t have any money.” I squint up at my sister and watch the irritated look come across her face. We can’t tell which street the ice cream man is on but know he’s close.

“Oh! Carrot, I don’t have enough for you, but I guess I’ll share. Wait!”

I watch her run back into the house and emerge thirty seconds later with Mom’s swear jar, half full of quarters. Kellen sits down on the porch steps with the jar between her knees and fishes out coins.

She runs to catch the ice cream truck just as it stops in front of our house. “I’ll pay Mom back with my next allowance, so shhh, don’t tell her okay?”

I nod.

Five minutes later we’re sitting on the shady tree branch so our ice cream bars won’t melt.

“Oh crap.” Kellen slinks down a little.

I look up and see Mom, who has walked around from the back of the house, her swear jar clutched in her grubby gardening gloves. She eyes us in the tree and my stomach does a little dive as she starts to march toward us. Uh-oh.

“Kellen McKinley!” Mom stops a few feet from the tree and looks up at us. Her eyes mean trouble, but she doesn’t even look at me. “Why in the hell is my money jar on the porch? Are you stealing from it?”

Kellen looks at me and I look at her, deciding what we should say. I’m just about to open my mouth when Kellen blurts out, “Mom, Kara didn’t have money, and I didn’t have enough to buy an ice cream bar for her. I promise I’ll pay it back.”

Mom has her gloved hand over her eye as she squints up at us, even though we are in the shade. “Get. Down. Right. Now.”

“Mom, I’m—”

“Down!”

Kellen looks at me and sucks her lips in as she makes her way down the branch. Mom looks at me quickly and I look away. Now my ice cream bar tastes like wet paper. I look back down at Mom and try to speak, to tell her it’s my fault. “Mom, Kellen didn’t—”

“Just eat your ice cream bar, Kara,” Mom hollers up to me. “Are you going to need help getting down from there?”

Kellen’s on the ground now, her eyebrows arched high and she blinks widely, which is what she always does to keep from crying. As she shuffles over to Mom, melted rivulets of ice cream run down her hand. “Mom,” my sister’s voice is shaky. “Kara didn’t have money, I told you I—”

Mom grabs the half-eaten ice cream bar and throws it into the bushes before she points in my sister’s face. “You don’t steal from us! I did not raise you to be a thief! Get your butt to your room, now!”

My sister looks down and walks toward the house, her butterfly coin purse peeking out of the back pocket of her shorts.

Mom follows my sister up the porch and my ice cream drips all down my arm and into the crook of my elbow. I throw it into the bushes where Mom threw Kellen’s.

I stay in the tree for awhile and watch for my sister to open her window and talk to me. I keep readjusting my position so I can see and make sure she’s okay. The blinds in her window suddenly drop, and where my sister stood a little while ago, there are tiny pools of ice cream, drying on the hot sidewalk.

24.
Coarsely chop.

..........................................................

When I get back to the café, Mom doesn’t ask me about my day. Instead, she insists that I sit down at a booth. Her shoulders are hunched and her face droops. There are rings under her eyes and she massages the back of her neck. “Listen, you need to help me out here. The school computer called so I know you skipped everything after first period. Grounding you is not a huge punishment, Kara, because you never go anywhere.”

My eyes wander out the window and across the street.

“I know you’re upset about the contest, but it’s not the end of the world. You got second place. It’s not like I’d let you go away to that school anyway. It’s out of state. You need to get that out of your head right now. Just forget it.”

I turn toward her, my eyes now on the cross around her neck. “Any chance that you’ll ever give a shit about what I want?”

“Satan must be pretty comfortable, dancing on your tongue, when you can speak to your own mother that way. After your sister, your dad—”

“Oh my God, Mom! You’re unbelievable, you know that? And you’re not the only one who lost them!”

I’ve crossed the line and there’s no going back. I’m aware of all the eyes in the café on us. But she doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes seethe with anger, something I haven’t seen in a long time.

“I’m finished talking about this,” she says. “You broke my grounding rule of going nowhere but home, school, and work. So now, since I hear from Crockett’s that you no longer work there, you will help out here, every day.”

She disappears into the kitchen.

I try to scoot out of the booth, but someone slides in next to me. I smell Charlie’s soap, and out of the corner of my eye I can see he’s staring straight ahead, rather than at me. He stretches his arms out on the table, clasping his fingers together. I focus my gaze on his hands. He grabs a Snowflake Sugar packet out of the holder. His knuckles are rough and dry. He folds all the corners inward, spins it around, and then flicks it off the table.