The Distance to Home (11 page)

I
stared down at Haley's phone, waiting for Zack to write back. I could still hear Haley singing in the bathroom. The time on the clock changed to 6:35…6:36…6:37.

Nothing.

I was still holding the phone in the palm of my hand when I heard the front door open.

“Pizza time!” Dad yelled.

I put the phone back on Haley's bureau in the exact same place I had found it and went downstairs.

The pizza box was open on the kitchen counter: half pepperoni for me and Haley, half green peppers and onions for Mom and Dad. It was the way we always got our pizza. Dad was pouring root beer into tall glasses while Mom put plates and napkins at our places.

“Did you tell your sister it's time for dinner?” Mom asked.

“Yeah,” I said, even though I hadn't. “She'll be down soon.” I grabbed a slice of pepperoni out of the box and put it on my plate.

Dad and Mom sat down, ready to eat, but Haley's chair was still empty.

I started to lift my slice toward my mouth when Mom said, “Honey, wait.”

“Laurie, it's going to get cold,” Dad said.

“This is a family vacation. Is it so hard for us to all sit down and eat as a family?” Mom put her napkin back on the table and went upstairs to get Haley.

Dad twiddled his fingers like he had a plan. He stood up quickly. “Mom said we have to eat dinner as a family, but she didn't say anything about having snacks as a family.” He raised his eyebrow. “What do you think?” He opened up the cupboard where we kept all the junk food. “An appetizer course of cheese curls?”

I nodded. My silly dad.

“We need to eat them fast, though.” Dad poured a bunch into my open hands.

“No problem!”

We gobbled them up and were still licking our orange fingers when Mom came down with Haley.

Haley's hair was dripping wet and she had already changed into her pajamas. “Why are you licking your fingers?” she asked me, laughing. “You are so weird sometimes.”

I shrugged and looked at Dad. “I guess I am.”

“So weird,” Dad said, reaching for a slice of pizza.

“I'd like to propose a toast.” Mom raised her glass. “To one whole day of Haley and Quinnen getting along like they used to.”

Dad raised his glass, too. “Amen to that!”

Haley rolled her eyes and raised her glass of root beer. “To ridiculous parents!”

“To pizza!” I said, clinking my glass with Haley's.

We all knocked glasses with each other and followed up with gulps of root beer. Haley picked off her pepperoni slices and ate them one by one. Mom and Dad brainstormed ideas for things to do the next day.

When all the pizza was gone, Haley and I cleared the table while Mom and Dad went into the living room to play cards.

“You want to watch a movie tonight?” Haley asked.

“Sure,” I said, dumping some bits of crust into the trash can. “Which one?”

“I don't care. You can pick.”

“Really?” Haley never let me pick the movie unless Mom and Dad made her.

“Yeah,” she said. She had been washing the silverware, but she stopped for a moment to look out the window. “Unless…”

“What?”

“Never mind. Mom probably wouldn't let us.” She went back to washing the dishes.

“Come on. You know I hate when you start saying something and then don't tell me what you were going to say.”

“Fine. But I know they'll veto it,” she said. “Going for a swim. At night.”

“That's the best idea ever, Hales!”

I ran into the living room. “Mom, Dad—can me and Haley go swimming?”

“Right now?” Dad asked.

Mom looked up from her laptop. She wasn't supposed to bring it on vacation. “It's pitch-black out there.”

Dad peered out the window overlooking the lake. “Laurie, it's a full moon.”

“Oh,” Mom said. I'm sure she was trying to think of some other reason why we shouldn't do it.
Sharks?

“It's their vacation, too,” Dad continued. Then he turned to me and said, “I'm fine with it if your mother agrees.”

I put on my most-responsible-person-ever face. Then I wiped the pizza sauce off the side of my mouth. “Please, Mom.”

She sighed. “Fine. However, if you come out covered in leeches…” But she was smiling as she said it.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I ran upstairs to change into my bathing suit. I peeked in Haley's room. Her phone was right where I'd left it. I thought about grabbing it and checking to see if Zack had written anything back, but then I heard Haley coming up the stairs.

Please don't check.

Haley met me in the hallway in her bikini.

We grabbed towels from Mom and Dad's room and went downstairs. I shivered when we stepped out the back door. The stones marking the path down to the dock were cool under my feet. “Have you ever gone skinny-dipping before?” I asked Haley.

“I don't know.” Her eyes twinkled in the moonlight. “Have I?”

I didn't ask again; I knew she meant yes.

When we came out from under the trees and walked onto the dock, the whole lake was lit by the moon. The sky was filled with thousands and thousands of stars, and the water was calm and quiet. There were no motorboats or people on Jet Skis or even a kayak. It was just me and Haley, sitting on the edge of the dock, dipping our toes in the water.

“You really should paint your toenails,” she said, lightly splashing her feet in the water.

I shook my head. “No way.”

“I could paint them for you tomorrow.”

Even though there were lots of things Haley and I did together, she had never offered to do that. Toenail painting was a Haley and Mom thing. Dad and I were officially not invited.

“Okay. But if I don't like it, I can take it off, right?”

“You'll probably like it,” she said. “I'm pretty talented.”

We got real quiet then, and I thought about the phone upstairs. Was there a way to delete a text message? Were there take-backs? What if I called Zack and said it was a mistake and I was sorry and please, please, please don't tell my sister?

Haley shivered. “It's now or never,” she said, standing up. She looked up at the moon, put her hands together, and dove into the water. One of those clean dives with no splashes. She popped her head up a few yards away from the dock. “It's amazing, Quinnen. Come on—jump!”

I looked up at a star and wished. Wished for that message to disappear from Haley's phone and for everything to stay just like it was right now.

And then I grabbed my nose and jumped.

I'm not sure Haley and I would have ever left the water if Mom hadn't come out and stood on the dock, bribing us with hot chocolate.

We sat in the plastic chairs on the patio behind the house, all four of us sipping our drinks and watching for shooting stars. It was Dad's idea. He had an eye for them. That or he was a really good liar. He would always jump up and point, saying he had seen one. But then none of us could ever say that we saw it, too.

“Oh, wow!” Haley shouted. “I saw one!”

Dad squinted up at the sky. “Really?”

“It was incredible.”

I stared up at the sky. There was too much of it. How was I ever going to be looking at the right spot at the right time to see one?

“I'll be back in a sec,” Haley said, and she went inside.

Mom and Dad and I continued to stare up at the sky, hoping we could be as lucky as Haley.

“Mom!” Haley yelled from inside the house. It was different from any yell I'd heard from her before, and I'd heard a lot of them.

Mom stood up to go inside, but before she got to the house, Haley was slamming open the sliding glass door. Her cell phone was in her hand, and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.

Haley stared right into my eyes. “I hate you.”

“Haley,” Mom said. “What's wrong?”

“You couldn't let me have this one good thing, could you? You had to go and take it away.”

One
good thing? Did my sister really think Zack was the “one good thing” in her life?

“Just the other week, you didn't even know if he liked you back, and now all of a sudden you decide you love him?”

Haley glared at me. The whites of her eyes stood out in the dark, reminding me of the dog we had found hurt on the side of the road last fall. Wet and whimpering and scared all at once.

“Quinnen?” Mom said. “What's going on? Will someone say something?”

“It was a mistake.” I couldn't look at Mom, and I really couldn't look at Haley. All I could do was stare down at my lap.

“She texted Zack,” Haley said. “She texted him and told him I wanted to break up with him.”

“Quinnen!” Mom said sharply. But I still didn't look up.

“I'm sorry,” I said. But I wasn't sorry. Not completely. My voice started to waver. “What if I tell him it was me?”

“It doesn't work like that,” Haley said. “It's too late. He never really loved me. He wrote back ‘Okay.' ” She could barely get out the last word before she started crying these big gulpy sobs.

Okay.

Okay,
like he was agreeing. He was okay with breaking up with my sister. Haley and Zack were over.

It had worked.

Mom wrapped Haley in her arms and the two of them walked out to the dock, leaving me and Dad alone on the patio. Dad shifted in his seat a little, like he was trying to find the words he was supposed to say to me, the words I didn't need to hear because I knew what he was going to say already. That I was the bad sister. That I shouldn't have done it.

“Your sister's very upset,” Dad finally said.

I couldn't look at him, so I stared at the moon instead. “I know.” I wrapped my towel around tighter, but I couldn't stop shivering.

“You really texted him?”

I nodded silently.

“What did you write?”

“ ‘I think we should break up.' ”

Dad sighed. Mom and Haley were sitting on the edge of the dock. Mom was rubbing Haley's back, so I knew she was still crying. “Who breaks up by text message?”

“I guess everyone,” I said.

He shook his head.

“One time, Casey's brother had his friend do it for him.”

“That's pretty bad,” Dad said with a little laugh. “Quinnen, you know this isn't funny, right?”

I nodded.

“Even if you really don't like Zack, it's not okay for you to make decisions for your sister. I know it's hard to understand—and it's hard for your mom and me, too. Haley's a teenager. There are always going to be boys. Your sister—she's social. She's going to be out there making new friends and meeting people. That's who she is. And it's changing every minute.”

He cleared his throat. “There are lots of times when Mom and I think it would be so much easier if we could make decisions for you and Haley. But it doesn't work like that.”

“Really?”

“Your mom and I would love to protect you and Haley from everything, honey. But it's impossible. You wouldn't want to be the one kid in your school in padding and a helmet, right?”

“Definitely not.”

“Well, that means your mom and I are taking a gamble. Every day, we let you and Haley out into the world. It means mistakes happen. We all make mistakes. Lord knows I've made plenty.”

Me too,
I thought.

I'd wanted Haley and Zack to break up, but I didn't think it would look like this. Feel like this. The way Haley looked at me—my own sister staring right back at me with so much hate in her eyes.

I looked up at the sky, hoping for a shooting star. I needed one. Just one.

“Do you think Haley will ever forgive me?”

Dad didn't answer right away. Mom and Haley were walking back from the dock. Haley was still sniffling, but at least she had stopped sobbing.