Whatever Doesn't Kill You (18 page)

I don't have any particular gift for saying the right thing at the right time, but I think in this case I may have succeeded. It probably wouldn't serve my interests at this point to remind her that
she
was the one who dropped
me
like a hot rock.

“I'll check with my mom,” Katie says. “I don't think she'll have a problem with it.” She turns on the
TV
. “You want to watch
Cosby
or something?”

Happy families, working it all out. “No thanks. I don't believe in that stuff anymore.”

Katie gives me a funny look but flips through the channels accommodatingly. We skip past
Law & Order
— I'm not in the mood for a murder mystery now that I've solved one of my own—and finally settle on one of those home-decorating shows where people spend more money on a couch than most of the people in my apartment building make in a month. It's a nice distraction from talking about the real world, though, and we sit there in silence until Katie's mother brings up her supper and a plate of home-baked muffins for us.

“Mom, can Jenna sleep over?”

Ms. Quinn gives me a big smile. “Of course. It's always nice to have company.”

And it's that easy.

Katie's mom hauls out an inflatable bed from the basement and finds me some sheets. Katie and I actually have a few laughs as we blow up the air mattress, which feels pretty good considering the evening I've had. Ms. Quinn makes up the bed for me like she's spreading out fine linens for the Queen or something.

“Do you girls want some chips or a drink? I think there's still a bottle of Coke in the fridge.”

“No thanks,” I tell her. Good grief, I'm going to weigh five hundred pounds by Sunday if I don't start saying no.

After an hour or two of lying around watching
TV,
Katie on her bed and me on the air mattress, we decide to turn off the light and go to sleep. I've slept over at Katie's countless times—never her at my place, always me at hers—and it's never like the sleepovers you see in movies, with pillow fighting and talking about boys. It's always just sitting around watching
TV
until we get tired and then going to sleep. But tonight, once the light is off, I suddenly feel more like talking.

“The thing that gets me,” I say into the darkness, “is that I've asked Simon about my dad, like, once a week since I realized I didn't have one.”

“Uh-huh.”

I can't tell from that uh-huh whether Katie wants me to shut up or keep talking, so I choose the latter. “If he'd even just once said, ‘Our dad was a complete dick,' maybe I would have given up on this whole thing.”

“Maybe he just didn't want to speak ill of the dead. Or he feels guilty.”

“Well, he ought to feel guilty! He killed his father! Well, as good as, anyway.”

There's a long silence, and then Katie asks, “So what was he like?”

“Who, my dad?”

“No, Travis. Was he scary? Did he freak out when he saw you?”

“No. He wasn't scary at all. He was just…” I think it over for a second. “He was just a guy, you know? He actually thought I was Emily at first.”

“Well, you do look a lot like her. I mean, what she must have looked like when she was fifteen. She looks even older than Simon now. But think about it. Travis was gone for fifteen years. He probably remembers Emily when she was, what, nine years old?”

“Eight.”

“Right. I bet you would lose track of time, being in prison for so long.”

I wonder about that for a minute. “I don't think I would. Especially if I were Travis. I think I would spend every day counting off the minutes until I got out. I mean, he shouldn't have been the one in there, really. Or at least he shouldn't have been in there alone. Simon should have been with him.”

There's a long silence, and I wonder if maybe Katie has fallen asleep, but finally she responds. “If Simon was in prison, where would that have left you? And Wex? And Emily? I mean, it's not like Simon has spent the whole fifteen years out partying or something.”

I chew on that for a while. It's true: Simon doesn't really have a great life. When was the last time he even
went
to a party? Or had a date? Or worked at a job that didn't completely suck? Even before we lived with him, he was still over at our house almost every day, checking up on Momma, making sure she'd remembered to feed us, buying diapers for Wex when Emily forgot, helping me with my homework. I think about what Travis said, about Simon having always been the smart one, the responsible one. He should have been a doctor or a lawyer or something, not someone who cleans up other people's crap for a living. Has he spent his entire life trying to make up for that one—huge, granted, yes, but only one—mistake?

I lie there in the dark for a long time, thinking about how many little things had to go wrong for that one horrible thing to happen. I wonder how often Simon thinks about it, about what else he could have been. Another year and he could have been gone. But then… where would I be? Stuck in a house with a psycho who drinks and beats up his kids, I suppose. I wonder if Momma would have gone nuts anyway, even if Dad hadn't died. Would Emily still have had Wex? Somehow I doubt she'd have been better adjusted than she is with a father like that. I just lie there and listen to the cars go by outside, wondering and wondering, hearing Katie start to snore. Finally, after an eternity, I drift away into the darkness myself and let sleep catch up with me.

It barely feels like I've been asleep when Katie's mother knocks on her door.

“Jenna, honey?”

“Mmf?” I sit up, groggy, pushing my hair out of my face.

“Jenna, did you forget to ask your brother if you could sleep over?”

“Sorry, what?” It takes me a minute to remember where I am and why. At least I don't need to act like I don't know what she's talking about.

“Your brother, sweetie. He's on the phone. He wanted to know if you were here. The poor boy—he's worried sick.”

I'm on the verge of telling her that “the poor boy” is only about five years younger than she is but figure that might sound rude. “I could have sworn I left him a note,” I mumble instead.

“He must not have seen it. I told him you're fine, but he wants to talk to you.”

She hands me the cordless phone and I put it up to my ear. “Hello?”

I've never heard such an explosion out of Simon as the one that comes out of the phone. “What the hell has gotten into you lately?” I sense the question is rhetorical so I just shrug, not quite awake enough to realize he can't see me through the phone. I hold the phone a little farther away from my ear—he's really screaming at me. I'm just hearing highlights of his monologue. “Called Marie-Claire…didn't know what I was talking about…lying…felt like an idiot…”

“Look, it's, um—” I look from Katie, still snoring away, to her mother, concerned and, well, motherly, standing in the doorway. “It's really late. Can we talk about whatever I did or didn't do in the morning?”

There's a long silence. I don't know what kind of reaction Simon was looking for, but whatever it was, it's not what I just gave him. I picture him deflating into a shriveled mess on the floor, like a big Mylar balloon that's been punctured, and it feels oddly satisfying.

“Fine,” he says finally and hangs up. If we had one of those old-fashioned phones at home, with the handset and cord, I'm sure he would be slamming the receiver down in a huff. As it is, though, all he'll be able to do is press the Off button with what will be an unsatisfying little
bleep
.

I do the same on my end and hand the phone back to Ms. Quinn. “I'm sorry about all that.”

“It's okay, sweetie. Sometimes big brothers are a pain, aren't they?” She gives me a little smile, but with the hallway light shining behind her, it's hard to see if she's being sympathetic or patronizing.

“Yeah, they can be.”

“Do you want to go back to sleep? Or would you like some hot chocolate or something?”

“No, thank you. I'm not thirsty.”

It's not hard to see how Katie got to be as big as she is. Every time something comes up that might be hard to talk about, her mother offers her food. It figures that Katie deals with every little problem she has by eating.

“All right then,” Ms. Quinn tells me. “Have a great sleep.”

I don't, after that. I'm not sure what time it was when Simon called, but the rest of the night drags on endlessly. I toss and turn on the air mattress, my body exhausted but my brain going a mile a minute.

I suppose I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I startle awake to find the sun streaming through the window and Katie shuffling around her room, getting dressed.

“Oh hey, sorry, I thought you were asleep.” Katie pulls the blanket off her bed and uses it to cover up. I roll over and close my eyes, pretending to go back to sleep even though she's probably not fooled. Katie's not big on public nudity, so I'll accommodate her by pretending I saw nothing.

Once she's dressed, Katie flops down on the bed and I make a big production of pretending to wake up. I stretch and sit up.

“How long have you been up? What time is it?”

“I don't know. Long enough to have a shower, I guess.” Katie finds her cell phone on her bedside table and checks the time. “It's eight fifty-one. Why, do you have someplace to be?”

“Nowhere at all. Hey, can I grab a shower?”

“Yeah. You can borrow some of my mom's clothes, if you want. They'd probably fit you better than mine.”

Katie tiptoes into her mother's room—her mom is still sleeping—and comes back with a T-shirt and sweatpants and a pair of wool socks. I'm glad that's all she's brought. It's odd enough to be borrowing a friend's mother's clothes, never mind underwear. I just wear my own from yesterday for the time being. Maybe I can sneak into the apartment later and pack some clothes.

When I'm clean and dressed, Katie and I head downstairs to forage for food. She opens a cupboard to reveal a shelf of cereal boxes. I've never seen anything like it. We've never had more than one box of cereal in our house at a time. There are neon colors and all manner of flavors and smiling cartoon characters on the boxes, the contents guaranteed to have no nutritional value whatsoever.

“This is awesome.” I've never had anything more exotic than no-name frosted flakes, and I'm having a hard time deciding between the box with the grinning bear or the one with the goofy leprechaun. Both seem to involve some sort of colored marshmallows. In the end, I decide to have a small bowl of the fruity bear cereal, then follow it up with a bowl of the leprechaun cereal.

I haven't even had a chance to get a bowl out of the cupboard when there's a knock on the door.

“That's weird.” Katie goes to answer it. “It's probably the Jehovah's Witnesses or something.”

I follow her, Ms. Quinn's wool socks skidding a little on the freshly polished wood floors. “Or the what-do-you-call-them, the ones with the suits and name tags. Morons.”

Katie finds that hilarious. “Mor
mon
s, you idiot.”

“Whatever. I don't know one guy with religious pamphlets from another.”

I poke my head around the corner so I can see the front hall, just in case it's the freaky homeless guy who was wandering up and down the street last night. It's not though. There, standing at Katie's door, his arms crossed over his chest and his gloveless hands tucked into his armpits for warmth, is Simon.

“You.” He looks past Katie to where I'm standing. There are bags under his eyes and a frown line like an exclamation point over each eyebrow. “Go and get in the truck. Now.”

Katie turns and looks back at me, her eyes wide. I must confess I'm a little alarmed myself. I've seen Simon annoyed before, but never really mad. The look on his face now tells me he's miles from fooling around.

“What are you going to do?” Katie hisses at me, her back to Simon. I shrug. He doesn't know I know anything—at this point, he's just mad that I lied to him and stayed out overnight without telling him. But that's nothing compared with how angry I am at him for lying to me for fifteen years. If he wants to yell at me, that's fine; I've got some yelling of my own to do. And it's not like he's
dangerous
, despite being sort of a killer. I mean, it's
Simon
. Then again…I look at his face, the twitching muscle along his jawline as he clenches his teeth and stares me down.

“
Now
, Jenna.”

I chew on my lip a little. I don't see any way out of this house without going past Simon, and he's a lot bigger than I am.

“I need to get my clothes,” I tell him. “They're upstairs.”

“Hurry up.”

I contemplate making a run for it, out the back door, but I suspect there's a sizable snowdrift up against it that would make it impossible to open. Instead I just head up to Katie's room, taking my sweet time, and grab the bundle of clothes I left rolled in a little ball on her bedroom floor. I'm somehow hungry and nauseated at the same time as I trudge back downstairs.