Exposed (20 page)

Too easy to keep going. Too easy to fall all the way back into the hole. But I can’t say that. I’ve watched Dad do it too many times—and he’ll hear it in my voice.

“Maybe after Regionals,” I say. “I need to be in top form on November twentieth. You know that.”

Dad gives me a quick look, and I see resignation. Maybe a little embarrassment or worry, but acceptance. “Okay, then. I won’t buy pizza again until after Regionals. But if you win, maybe we can go get a great dinner at Zoby’s to celebrate. If you win, you definitely deserve the Crave-Buster and a Bomb.”

My head bounces off my car window, and I have to make myself not whack it again. Zoby’s Crave-Buster is a twenty-ounce porterhouse steak, and the Bomb is short for
Chocolate Bomb
. A dessert with cake and syrup and cherries and nuts and ice cream, and a layer or two of caramel on top of that.

My stomach roars at the thought. Then it roars at the delicious, buttery, meaty smell of the pizzas in the
backseat. If Dad doesn’t get us home soon, I’ll leap back there and chew through the boxes.

His clueless, pleased expression is driving me crazy.

Dad doesn’t get it.

How will I ever help him get it?

And if he doesn’t ever understand, how will I be able to keep all the progress I’ve made since I started on Paul’s program?

By the time we get home, the knots in my chest have tied themselves in my belly, too, and I’m not even that hungry. I manage to cut my pizza in half, and when Dad walks Lauren’s sitter to the door, I feed the other half to the garbage disposal. If I don’t do that, I’ll eat it later, or Dad will, and I don’t want him to. Especially not after he comes back to the kitchen, picks up his large deluxe supreme, and lugs it off to his bedroom. That pizza’s enough to feed four people. Seriously.

Lauren’s pizza has to go into the oven for safekeeping because she’s out in the garage again with her music blaring. I pass by the door on the way to the stairs, but I don’t hear her singing at all. Just the music. No voice.

Weird.

I knock on the garage door to see if she’s okay.

No answer. I try the handle, but the door’s locked.

I snarf a bite of pizza, chew it, swallow, then set the rest on the coffee table. Back I go to the garage door, and this time I bang on it.

The music shuts off.

“Yes?” Lauren calls in a quivery-nervous voice.

“What are you doing in there?” I ask. “I didn’t hear you singing. Are you okay?”

Silence.

Then, “Nothing. I’m fine.”

This time the tone’s calmer … but something feels off.

Confused and a little worried, I lean against the door. “Open the door. We brought home pizza.”

Silence.

“Is Mom with you?” Lauren asks.

“No. Just me. Open the door.”

“I’m busy.”

Okay, now she’s sounding way too nervous again, in a real way instead of a fake goth-princess way, and I really am starting to worry about her.

“Hey, look. That’s my practice garage, and I said open the door. Now. Or you can’t use it anymore.”

“Mom said I could! Dad, too! No fair. You’re not my boss, Chan.”

Dad comes out of the kitchen. “Hey. I heard the yelling from my room. What’s wrong?”

I jerk a thumb toward the locked garage door. “She’s up to something, or something’s wrong. And she won’t open the door.”

“Tattletale!” Lauren yells, punctuated by a lot of banging and thumping and shuffling.

Dad’s eyebrows rise. He gives me an oh-great look, strides up to the door, and knocks more gently than I did. “Let us in, sweet pea. We just want to see your smiling face.”

Silence.

More shuffling.

Some muttering.

Then the door opens.

And there stands Lauren, in my new purple leotard. This year’s leotard!

Dad grabs my arm before I can grab her, but he can’t stop me from saying, “Lauren, you have to take that off. Now!”

She bursts into tears, pushes past us, banging us both with her rock-heavy duffel, and hauls the bag up the stairs, sobbing.

The sobs are kind of quiet. Way too subdued for usual Lauren behavior.

Dad and I are both too shocked to move for a second.

Then Dad says, “Chan, is it too early for Lauren to be going through … you know, the change? To, um, womanhood?”

He lets go of my arm, and I pat him on the hand. “Yeah, a little. I think. It’s probably the play pressure.”

“Is it worth it, all this craziness?” Dad’s expression looks earnest, and I can tell he really doesn’t understand what it feels like to want to win, to want to get that
prize, that part, or that trophy. To go for it and actually succeed. “Do you girls really feel like you have to do all this—the twirling, the musicals?”

“It’s not a have to, really. It’s … a want to.” I rub my hands together as I dig through my brain for the right words. “A drive to, way down inside.”

“But you know you’re good enough, you’re just perfect, even if you don’t win a competition or get a part in a little play, right?”

“Sure,” I say, then wonder if I’m lying.

We stand there another few seconds.

I keep listening for Lauren to start her give-me-attention hysterical crying, but there’s only silence, and that bugs me way worse than her theatrics.

“Can you, uh—” Dad nods to the stairs. “I know you’re mad at her over the leotard, but this might be out of my league.”

“I’ll handle it. And I won’t kill her over the leotard, I swear. So long as you promise to send the Wrath of Mom upstairs later, after she gets home.”

Dad wipes his forehead with his hand and looks relieved. “Deal. Done. And I still owe you.”

He heads back for his room and his pizza, and I climb the stairs trying to figure out how to comfort Lauren and still find out what’s wrong. When I get to my room, I find the purple marching leotard stretched neatly across my bed, and it doesn’t look any worse for the wear.

Lauren surrendered it voluntarily? No fight? No
speech about entitlement and privilege how it’s
just not fair
I get all the good leotards?

Have aliens kidnapped my little sister?

Muscles tensing, I turn toward her room, but the door’s closed. I know without even trying the handle that Lauren has barricaded herself in her Cave of Doom.

But why?

I knock but I don’t ask her to open the door.

When she doesn’t answer, I sit down in the hall on the other side and ask, “You want to talk?”

“No.” A slight sniff punctuates her answer. “I—I’m sorry about the leotard.”

Okay, yeah, the aliens came and stole Lauren. I must have missed the flashing lights.

“Why did you take that leotard, Lauren?”

Like before, she doesn’t answer. I didn’t figure she would, but after a minute or so, she surprises me with: “I just wanted to feel pretty. Like you. Grown-up and pretty, and like I can win something, too.”

I lean my head against her door. “You are pretty, silly, and you’re plenty good at singing.” I pause and listen for sniffling, but I don’t hear any. “The growing up part, that comes later. You’ll get older every year, right?”

Long silence. Then: “You’re telling Mom about the leotard, aren’t you?”

Ah. Leverage. Finally. “Not if you tell me what’s really going on.”

Another long silence, but this time, the clicking of
her door lock gets my attention. She pulls open the door to the Cave of Doom and sits down in front of me. Behind her, posters of cats and dogs and princesses in poofy costumes glow weird purple in her black lights.

My worry ratchets up another notch, because Lauren’s a wreck. And not the whole goth-black-makeup-fake-blood-tattoo kind of wreck. I mean pale, massive circles under her eyes, and her brown hair sticking up in every direction. She must have swiped some of Mom’s real makeup, because she’s wearing (badly applied) base instead of white powdery stuff like usual, and both of her cheeks are streaked with mascara. Tears glisten in the corners of her eyes, and she’s looking off to the side instead of at me.

“I know you think it’s stupid,” she says, a genuine shake in her voice as she looks at the floor, “but I really want to be a movie star. Maybe on Broadway, or a singing star. Something. Something—more.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid.” I strangle the urge to tease her even a little bit. For all the times Lauren’s played drama queen or pretended to be totally fragile, this time, she really does seem breakable. “But what does that have to do with all this stressing out?”

She leans forward and speaks in a low whisper. “I heard some important people might come to the play, once we’re really doing it. You know. Producers and talent scouts looking for kids to be in commercials, or maybe even have some movie tryouts.”

“Who told you that?”

“My boyfriend.”

“You have a boyfriend?” It comes out deadpan, which is good, but totally an accident, because I’m really, really shocked. It’s all I can do to keep my face from twitching, not smile, not laugh, and not just let my jaw drop open like it wants to.

“His name’s David.” She looks up at me with tear-swollen eyes. “
Please
don’t tell Mom. She wouldn’t let me talk to him or see him or anything.”

Instantly, I’m right there with her.

No, Mom would cut her off in a heartbeat, just like I’m cut off from Paul.

I think about my conversations with Paul about sibling loyalty, and I switch from Mom questions to Dad questions. “Does this boyfriend person make you happy?”

Lauren’s tense face eases into a smile, and a blush colors her cheeks. “Yeah. He’s ten. It’s a little old, I know, but he’s nice. He has a voice coach, too, and he might try to get me some free lessons when we see each other at the dress rehearsal.”

“That’s pretty cool.” I reach out and ruffle her messy hair. “But you’ve gotta ease up. You’re totally blowing your own mind.”

“I need a voice coach for real,” she says, getting serious again. “If I’m ever going to make it, I just have to get real lessons, but you know how Mom is. I’m trying to save my money, but it’s so expensive.”

My mind shifts to Paul and paying him back for the stuff he’s sending. If I made a second streaming video, or maybe even more …

“Well, maybe I can help some with that, Lauren. We’ll see, okay?”

Lauren relaxes a little more. “I really am sorry about the leotard. I won’t wear it again.”

I shrug one shoulder, then hear myself saying, “It’s only a costume. If you need it, just be careful with it, or my ass will be grass with the Bear.”

Lauren’s lips tremble, then she smiles really big, and throws her scrawny arms around my neck.

“Sometimes I hate your guts,” she says against my neck, “but sometimes you’re the best big sister ever.”

It takes me a few more minutes to get her settled down and eating her pizza in front of the latest Disney flick, and a few more minutes to cancel the Wrath of Mom agreement with Dad. After that, I steal a few un-supervised minutes on the downstairs computer and check my in-box—but it’s empty.

I look around at Lauren, who seems more relaxed and happy now. And Dad, back in his room, stuffed from his humongous pizza, he’s probably all relaxed and happy, too. Mom at work with her politically correct friends—no doubt she’s having a blast.

As for me, I’m sore and tired and a little hungry, and hollowed out from missing Paul. I wish I could talk to Devin. I wish it so hard nobody even notices when I
snitch the phone and take it upstairs, and sit talking to her for over half an hour, all the while keeping a lookout for Mom to come home.

She never does, and I go to bed and have a major nightmare about Lauren in my purple leotard, dancing for big-time movie producers while she cries about everyone staring at her. I’m still having that bad dream when she wakes me up crawling into bed with me. She doesn’t even ask permission anymore, and I don’t make her. I just get up and cover her after she gets settled, go to my desk to write a poem, and hope really hard that Lauren doesn’t have the same nightmare she saved me from dreaming.

A wounded deer leaps highest,
I’ve heard the hunter tell;
‘Tis but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is still.

The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs:
A cheek is always redder
Just where the hectic stings!

Mirth is the mail of anguish,
In which it caution arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And “You’re hurt” exclaim!

Emily Dickinson

CYCLES

And then there was the time
Of growing,
Of getting to know
All the smiles and all the whispers.

And then there was the time
Of knowing.
The reaching and holding
All the sighs and all the winks.

And then there was the time
Of losing.
The searching and surviving
All the tears and all the sobbing.

And then there was the time
Of turning.
The pleading and shouting
All those words and all those lies
nd all those echoes

drifting

slowly

back.

Chan Shealy

Friday, the football team has a bye, so we get a break from practice. That only happens twice all during the season, and I’m glad for the chance to let my twirling bruises heal for a day or two.

Last thing before we leave school, out in the main drive-around, Devin loads my backpack with two huge stacks of rubber-banded note cards, a pad of scribbled notes (with references, no less), and pictures of Emily Dickinson printed off Internet sites.

“I’m thinking write the paper normal, see, but also do a little newspaper-looking spread we could use for a cover—you know?” Devin shapes a square in the air with both hands, and her dark eyes flash with excitement. “You’re so good with stuff like that. Make it look like some gossip rag? That’ll totally get us some extra points, and make up for that abysmal outline.”

“Sure.” My breath makes a cloud in the cold air as I turn toward Mom’s politically correct car, wishing that
she’d stayed late at work again, like she had every day this week.