Then I Met My Sister (3 page)

Four

I’m dreaming that I’ve fallen down a manhole and mice are nibbling on my toes.

I squeal out loud. Something really
is
nibbling on my toes.

Oh, right. It’s my birthday.

I open my eyes and squint against the bright sunshine that pierces through the slits in the shutters. Mom is at the foot of my bed, smiling at me.

“Eight, nine, ten! All there.”

I yank my foot away from her cool hand. This is no way to start the weekend.

“Mom, it’s
Saturday
.”

She walks around the bed and kisses my forehead. “You know I always have to start your birthday by counting your fingers and toes. It’s a tradition … the first thing I did when you were born.”

I rub my eyes sleepily. “Can’t we just assume they’ll all be there from one year to the next? I mean, if I severed a finger or a toe, I’d probably mention it at the time, rather than waiting for you to find out during the next birthday count.”

Mom brushes hair off my forehead and smiles. “My witty, silly Summer.” She gazes into my eyes. “I can’t believe you’re seventeen.”

Her throat catches on the last word.

“Japanese tonight?” I ask, eager to change the subject.

“We have reservations at seven,” Mom says, her voice firm and strong again. “Grandma and Grandpa are coming, and Aunt Nicole and Uncle Matt, and … oh, did you want to invite your friend? The surgeon’s son?”

“Gibs? I dunno. I guess so. He’s been helping me study for my history final, so I kinda owe him anyway. Is it okay?”

“Of course it’s okay. We’d love to have him. So … are you two getting serious?”

I prop up on my elbows. “About my history final? Yes, we’re very serious about it.”

Mom raises an eyebrow. “You know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, I do. It drives Mom crazy that I don’t date. Frankly, I’d rather date amphibians than most of the guys in my school. Gibs is different, of course—smart, sweet, funny—which is what makes him such a good friend, which is why we spent the junior/senior prom watching Monty Python movies in his basement.

“We’re just friends, Mom,” I say.

“Hmm.” Mom’s
hmm
means
we’ll see about that
.

Then she just keeps sitting there. Like I’m on a ventilator or something.

I flutter my eyelashes to signal that now that Mom has verified my fingers and toes are still intact, I might as well go back to sleep, considering it’s seven a.m. on a Saturday. But she isn’t budging.

“Well,” she finally says. “Time for work.”

I peer at her quizzically. “Do I have a job?”

“Oh, quit being silly. I told you Aunt Nicole needed help at the flower shop.”

My jaw drops. “Uh,
not
.”

“Uh,
yes.
I distinctly remember discussing it with you.”

I huff indignantly. “Was I in the room at the time? Or maybe we ‘discussed’ it when I was asleep?
God
, Mom.” She’s such a control freak.

But she’s not listening to me. She’s set her plan in motion, and now all she has to do is move the little chess pieces to her specifications. I’m a lowly pawn. She flutters through my room, opening blinds, pulling clothes out of my closet, patting my leg—“Up, up! Chop, chop!”—and spraying asthma-inducing air freshener for good measure.

“I’ll have breakfast waiting when you get downstairs,” she says briskly. “Hurry! You start at nine.”

“Mother!” I finally manage to wail, but she’s floating out the door, all tip-toed lightness and swooping skirt. Control-freaking puts her in such a good mood.

I groan, make my way to the shower, come back in my room, cough away the air freshener fumes, slip on some jeans and a T-shirt, then run a brush through my hair. Mom gives my hair a look of concern at least a couple of times a day, sometimes holding up a strand, studying it as if it were a lab specimen, then letting it fall limply back into place. My hair is “fine-textured,” she’s explained to me patiently, making it sound like a disease diagnosis, and requires “extra care” that I tragically can’t muster the motivation to give it. So I grow it long and swish it in her direction at every opportunity.

I walk downstairs and join Mom and Dad in the kitchen. Mom glances at me, winces, then turns back to the eggs on the stove.

“Happy birthday, honey,” Dad says without looking up from the newspaper. “Any special plans for the day?”

“Other than slave labor?” I ask, joining him at the table.

“Summer got a job in Aunt Nicole’s flower shop,” Mom says, bizarrely insinuating I had a hand in my fate.

“Mmmmmm,” Dad says. He functions in this household on a strictly need-to-know basis.

“Need some help with your hair?” Mom asks as she spoons eggs onto my plate. “A blow-dryer would give it some body.”

“What am I supposed to do at the flower shop?” I ask, stabbing my eggs with a fork.

“Whatever Aunt Nicole asks you to do,” Mom replies.

“Yeah, what exactly might that … entail?” I’m envisioning some poor bride carrying a handful of dandelions and wild onion greens down the aisle after I’m tasked with making her bouquet.

“I don’t know,” Mom murmurs, adding more eggs to my plate. “Maybe she’ll have you keep the books or something.”

“Keep the books.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Summer.”

I sigh. “All I did is repeat what you said.”

“I’m sure Aunt Nicole will put you to work in whatever way you can be helpful. You’ll learn some new skills, earn a little spending money. It’ll be great.”

Dad turns toward Mom. “Does she have to start on her birthday?”

“Well, it’s not like she had any elaborate plans,” Mom sniffs.

Touché. No statewide literary meets, drill team competitions, or dressy-casual birthday teas for
me
today.

Dad winks at me. “Sometimes the best plans are
no
plans.”

Mom clangs dishes noisily behind me. Dad never gets with the program. I love that about him.

“Bless you.”

“Thanks,” I tell Aunt Nic, wiping a watery eye.

I’ve sneezed, like, eighty times since I walked into the flower shop. I’ve been here a million times before, but there’s something about being elbow-deep in amaranthus that wages war on my immune system. Where the hell are the “books” I was supposed to keep?

I’ve been in the back of the shop all morning, lugging flowers from a refrigerator to a work table, wiping the dirt off my arms as I drop a load, so Aunt Nic can pin the flowers onto a wreath or stuff them into a vase.

“We’ll have to keep you stocked up with allergy medicine,” Aunt Nic says, grabbing a bunch of peach-colored roses from my thorn-pricked arms.

Darn. I was hoping she’d say, “We’ll have to keep you far, far away from this death trap.”

The bell dings as a customer opens the door and calls, “Helloooo!”

“Want me to go wait on her?” I ask.

Aunt Nic surveys me hastily, then shakes her head. She’s much less uptight than Mom, but I guess my scratched-up arms, watery eyes, and dirt-smudged clothes don’t exactly scream
customer service
. She gives me a quick smile and walks out to greet the customer.

They begin a sing-song conversation—everybody who walks into a flower shop is apparently in a pretty decent mood—and I grab my cell phone to call Gibs.

“Hello?”

“I’m being held hostage in—ah-
choo
—my aunt’s flower shop.”

“Bummer. I’m painting my parents’ bedroom.”

Damn. Gibs can always one-up me.

“Mom is making me work here,” I say. “I got, like, fifteen minutes’ notice this morning that I was starting today. My
birthday
.”

“Today’s your birthday?”

“Yeah.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thanks. Wanna eat Japanese tonight with my family?”

“Um … yeah. You sure?”

Ah-
choo
. “Yeah. Mom’s your biggest fan now that she’s found out you’re brilliant.”

“She won’t be expecting me to recite poetry or explain algorithms or anything, will she?”

“Maybe. Better come prepared. My house at six?”

“Sure, and …”

Ah-
choo
.

“… thanks.”

Aunt Nic rejoins me in the back room as I stick my cell phone back in my pocket.

“Hey, you’re on for Japanese tonight, aren’t you?” I ask her.

“Sure. Your treat?”

I wrinkle my nose. “I’m gonna have to spend all my paycheck on allergy medicine.”

She pauses, weaves her eyebrows together, and nods her head toward a rumpled plaid loveseat. “Let’s sit down for a sec.”

I squint at her quizzically, but she’s already headed for the sofa. I follow her and, as I sit down, I notice she’s carrying a brown paper bag. She sits beside me, holding the bag on her lap.

“Um … ” Aunt Nic says haltingly, “Uncle Matt and I will give you your birthday present at the restaurant tonight. But there’s something else I thought you might like to have.”

“What is it?” I strain to peek into the bag.

Aunt Nic pauses. She looks like she’s tossing words around in her head, giving them a test run before saying them out loud. Finally, she hands me the bag. “Happy birthday, honey.” Her voice trembles.

“What is
up
?” I ask her, but I’m already reaching inside the bag rather than waiting for an answer. I pull out a book. It’s bound in plump lavender fabric. It’s faded and, even with no writing on the cover, it looks dated.

“Honey.” Aunt Nic grabs my hands, loosening the book from my grip as it lands on my lap with a dull thud.

“Yes?”

“You don’t have to read this if you don’t want to.”

I glance down at the book, suddenly acutely curious. Every English teacher should preface a literature assignment this way: “You don’t have to read this if you don’t want to.” The assignment would become downright irresistible.

“What is it?”

Aunt Nic grows paler. She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. “Your sister kept a journal the last summer of her life.”

The book feels heavier on my lap.

I search Aunt Nic’s gray eyes. “Like … ‘I lost five pounds this week’? That sort of thing?”

She manages a smile. “I’m sure there’s some of that in there. But there’s more, too.”

“You read it?” What a stupid question. Of course she read it.

But Aunt Nic shakes her head. “I’ve picked it up a thousand times through the years. But … it wasn’t meant for my eyes. Shannon wouldn’t have wanted me to read it. But I have the feeling she might have wanted to share it with her sister.”

Her sister.
It’s weird; I’ve always thought of Shannon as
my
sister (the story of my life), but I’ve never thought of myself as
her
sister.

I touch the book gingerly.

“You don’t have to read it,” Aunt Nic repeats firmly. “Or, I don’t know, maybe you’ll start it, then want to put it away … like I did. The important thing to know is that the choice is yours.”

I grip the book tightly. “Why wouldn’t I want to read it?”

Aunt Nic shrugs. “I know you’ve always felt like you were in Shannon’s shadow in some way. So you might prefer to leave the past in the past.” She takes a deep breath. “But the fact is, this journal
does
exist. I can’t deny you the chance to get to know your sister better, if that’s what you want to do.”

I cock my head. “I live in a Shannon shrine, remember? I know everything.”

Aunt Nic’s eyes sparkle through a thin veil of tears. “No, you don’t.”

I shiver a little. “You’re weirding me out. Was she a closet vampire or something?”

Aunt Nic smiles and her eyes soften. “Not that I know of. But she was a real person, you know.”

“I kinda thought that went without saying. Was I supposed to think she was a superhero?”

I expect her to laugh … I
want
her to laugh … but Aunt Nic leans closer and looks more serious than ever. “If you want to learn more about your sister, here’s your chance.”

My eyes flicker from her face to the journal and back again.

“Why do
you
have her journal?”

Aunt Nic takes a deep breath. “After Shannon died, I helped your mom go through her things. We didn’t do it right away; for months, she left everything just the way it was. But when she started to get your nursery ready, she knew it was time.”