When Reason Breaks (18 page)

Once Elizabeth regained control, she sat and pulled Lily close.

“Seriously, Lily, don't hit people. We can dye your hair purple next year or something, but don't act like me that way, okay?” Elizabeth's breath caught in her throat. She swallowed hard and added, “Thanks for having my back, but it's not your style, Lillian Grace.”

“It was only Kevin and it was pretty funny,” Lily said with a smile.

“True, but no more, okay?”

“Okay,” said Lily and they sealed the deal with a fist-bump.

“Now, let's kick their asses the right way,” said Elizabeth. “You're up.”

Lily tilted her head from side to side like Elizabeth, but nothing cracked. She grabbed her bowling ball and let it fly. Crash! Another strike.

After their last game, Kevin grouped the others together and snapped a picture. Everyone, except Elizabeth, contorted their faces into silly poses. She flashed her “jazz smile” and held up her middle finger.

As they zipped up coats and dug out mittens and scarves, Lily shouted, “Snow!” and sprinted through the main doors; the others followed close behind. Large flakes danced with the whirling wind and landed on readied tongues and lifted faces.

“Come on, we still have time before Mom gets here,” said Lily. She led the pack across the street and up the block to the elementary school yard.

Tommy and Kevin scooped up snow and packed it, but the fluffy flakes prevented them from having a real snowball fight. Lily twirled and flopped backward into a pile. Emily and Elizabeth joined her, their arms spread wide and flapping to create their angels' wings.

After, Elizabeth attempted a sneak attack on Tommy, but he spotted her coming and dodged her tackle. She landed face-first in the snow, rolled over, and laughed. Tommy grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.

“So, what do you think about what Kevin said in there about this maybe being our first double date?”

Elizabeth's smile vanished and she shook her head. “Don't do this,” she said and bolted.

“Hey, wait!”

Elizabeth stopped and Tommy jogged the few feet to catch up.

Tommy cupped her face and then slid a hand to the back of her neck and pulled her toward him. They wrapped their arms around each other. He whispered, “I'm not like your father. I'd never cheat on you, Elizabeth.”

“I want to believe you, but I can't …” She stepped back. Tommy buried his hands in his jacket pockets.

“You really don't trust me?”

“I trust you more than I trust myself,” she said. “I'm a mess. I mean, I beat up my dad, my mom hates me, and I'm the worst big sister ever. I can't promise you pink paper hearts scattered in your locker and love notes covered in smiley faces.”

“Lucky for you, I'm not a fan of pink hearts or smiley faces,” he said with a grin. “All I want is you, Elizabeth. Your family drama can't last forever and when that gets better, so will you.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Maybe, but I can't do this right now,” she said.

“Will you ever be able to do this?”

Elizabeth stared at the snow beneath her and shifted from one foot to the other. “I don't know,” she whispered.

Tommy tilted his head back and closed his eyes. After a while, he swiped a gloved hand down his face, flicked off the water left by the fat melted flakes, and said, “So, I think I'm going to need some space from you, okay?”

“Yeah? How long?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, I'm grounded indefinitely, so I guess we'll see after that?”

“I guess,” he said.

A car horn pierced the tension between them.

“That's your mom. See ya, slugger,” Tommy said and jogged over to Kevin and Emily.

In the car, Elizabeth yanked off her coat, overwhelmed by the heat. At home, she slumped to her bedroom floor, her back against the door, and waited for the quiet that meant everyone was asleep.

She tapped out an e-mail to Tommy on her tablet and stared at it for a few minutes. Instead of pressing “send,” she hit “cancel.” She crawled into her bed and buried her face into her pillow to stifle her tears and screams.

In another part of town, Emily found Mamá awake in the family room, watching a biography about Marilyn Monroe.

“You didn't have to wait up,” Emily said as she plopped down on the sofa.

“I couldn't sleep.”

Emily nodded. “I read somewhere that watching TV is the worst thing you can do if you're trying to fall asleep.”

“Really?” Mamá flipped through the channels but returned to the Monroe biography. “So, did you have fun tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing crazy, right?”

“No.”

“Good.” Mamá sat up straighter and winced.

“What's wrong?” asked Emily.

“I have a pain in my neck,” she said and rubbed the spot.

“Is it named Edwin Delgado?”

Mamá playfully slapped Emily on the arm and said, “
Cállate
.”

They sat quiet for a long time, mesmerized by the black-and-white images of a young, beautiful Norma Jean. Emily studied her mom as she gazed at the screen, her eyelids heavy but refusing to rest.

“Mamá?”

“
¿Qué?
” she asked, but her gaze remained focused on the television.

“Nothing. Forget it.
Me voy a dormir
.” Emily kissed her mom on the cheek and headed to her room, where she slid into bed and hugged her pillow tight.

An hour later she was still awake, so she turned her phone on to see who was online. As soon as it powered up, her cell buzzed out of control. Kevin had posted the picture of them at the bowling alley. A long list of sarcastic comments followed about the lameness of bowling, the super lameness of hanging out with a sixth-grader, and worst of all, spending time with Elizagoth. Kevin responded to each one in his jokey way. She stayed out of it.

If Emily admitted that she had fun, her friends would bug her even more about pulling away. And if she posted a snarky comment about Tommy and Elizabeth, they probably wouldn't want to hang out with her again.
Who am I kidding?
Emily thought.
They probably didn't even want to hang out with me tonight
. Tommy and Elizabeth are Kevin's friends. They
probably invited her only because she's dating Kevin. It's like they had to.

She silenced her phone and turned on the television. A&E had moved on to a biography about Nelson Mandela. Mamá was either asleep on the couch or watching the same show downstairs. Emily hugged her pillow tighter, her eyelids heavy but her mind refusing to rest.

On the first day back to school after the holiday break, Elizabeth shuffled into first period and slumped into her assigned seat. She eavesdropped as students around her bragged about their fun-filled vacations. A daydream flashed in her mind of her stuffing dirty socks down their throats. She grinned and felt a little guilty because, aside from the Tommy fiasco, her time off wasn't horrible.

Nana brought her mouth-watering, homemade apple pie, and her mom made an effort at having a normal Christmas dinner, complete with a turkey roasted in their own oven. Last year, they noshed on two store-cooked rotisserie chickens.

Still, holidays would be different from now on. Everyone knew this, but they didn't want to acknowledge it, really.
Instead, they tiptoed around the empty spaces once filled by her father. They clung to the sides of the canyon for fear of falling into the enormous hole that lay inches from where they stood. Every now and then someone mentioned him, and Elizabeth briefly lost her footing. Each time, she needed to reposition herself to maintain stability.

And, of course, there
was
the Tommy fiasco. She glanced at Tommy in class to find Abby stroking a spot on the back of his near-shaved head with her index finger. Elizabeth hunched over her notebook and dragged her pencil across the page repeatedly in a diagonal line. When the page was covered with black, she turned to a new one and started again.

Next to her, Emily sat straight up with her legs crossed under the desk, as usual, but her dark, auburn-tinted hair rested at the base of her neck in a ponytail. Strands dangled in the front, out of the hair tie's grasp. She didn't circle the pieces around her ears like she usually did. She stared at the top of her desk while her palm covered her mouth and her fingers clutched her cheek.

Elizabeth was tempted to ask what her problem was, but if she said something stupid like,
My fish died
or
My friends are mad because I forgot to call them one night
, she'd have to shove a dirty sock down her throat, too.

The minutes passed in slow motion, with Ms. Diaz's voice distorting into nonsense, like the whiny, never-seen teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons.

“Blah blah blah … Tommy wants to make an announcement about the newspaper …

“Blah blah blah … No, Kevin, it's too cold to have class outside. In the spring, we'll go deep into the nearby woods to write poetry. It's beautiful there, very peaceful …

“Blah blah blah … Have a great rest of the day. See you tomorrow.”

Dazed students snapped back to attention with her final words and the clanging bell. Emily sat still as people around her packed up their belongings and moved toward the door. She peered at Abby and Sarah, who giggled and whispered as they walked out of the room. The girls didn't wait for Emily, who stayed in her seat as the room emptied.

Next to her, Elizabeth ripped pages out of her notebook. Mindless shading covered most of the sheets, but some had poetic phrases she'd jail in a new maximum-security shoe box. Maybe she'd leave this box in her bottom dresser drawer. Lily would discover it after her death. She would have left orders to burn everything, but her sister wouldn't follow through. Her work would be published and the world would realize she was a genius. Those who didn't bother to get to know her when she was alive would read her work and try to figure her out, but it would all be literary guesswork, really.

Elizabeth glanced at the looming black-and-white posters on the nearby wall and laughed at this idea of herself as a modern-day Emily Dickinson. She shoved her papers into her messenger bag and flew out of the room in a few swift steps. A sheet escaped from the crumbled bundle shoved into her bag. Ripped and wrinkled, the freed page fluttered to the floor like an injured bird.

Emily scooped up the paper and opened her mouth to call out to Elizabeth, but her voice failed her and the quick-moving girl was gone. Emily flattened the piece of paper. Her eyes widened as she read it. After, she carefully folded the paper in quarters, smoothing out as many wrinkles as she could. She saw Tommy near the doorway, about to leave.

“Tommy,” she called. He didn't hear her. She grabbed her backpack and hustled toward the door.

“Tommy,” she said, louder.

He turned. “Yeah?”

“This is Elizabeth's,” she said, holding the piece of paper in front of her, flat on her palm, like she was serving it on a tray. “She dropped it. I know you're kind of fighting right now, but I thought maybe you could give it back to her.”

Tommy seized the paper from Emily, gave it a fleeting look, and shoved it into his front jeans pocket. He turned and walked out the door, failing to notice the pained expression on Emily's face.

Three weeks later, Abby and Sarah found Emily in the library.

“Hey, girlie-girl, here you are,” Sarah chirped.

“Surprise, surprise,” added Abby.

Sarah shot Abby a hard look as they sat across from Emily. She smiled wide and said, “So, hot senior Michael Stango is having a party next weekend. You in?”

“I don't know,” said Emily. “I told you my dad's running
for the state legislature and I'm pretty much dead if I do anything wrong.”

Abby crossed her arms.

“Well, then we could hang out at the mall or go to a movie or something,” said Sarah. “We could have a sleepover and do facials. I know it's hard to believe, but this,” she framed her face, “doesn't happen on its own.”

Emily giggled.

“We miss you, Em,” said Sarah. “I know we see each other in school and we hung out a little over the break, but our fabulous, fearless threesome has devolved into a bitchy twosome.”

“Hey!” Abby said with a smile. “I prefer to call it being straightforward.”

Abby uncrossed her arms and leaned into the table. “Yeah, Em, come out with us. It'll be fun. Plus, like Sarah's face, a social life doesn't just happen. You have to work at it.”

They laughed.

“I mean, we know you have Kevin, and you were always on the quiet side, but you've been distant for a while now and we feel shut out,” said Sarah. She quickly added, “No offense.”

Emily sighed and said, “I know.”

“You know?” said Abby. “If you agree with us, do something about it.”

“Like what?” asked Emily.

“Snap out of it or take a pill or something and come out with us once in a while.”

Emily shook her head. “The thing is, my dad's running for the state legislature.”

“We know. So what?” said Abby.

Emily hesitated and glanced at her watch. “I'm late,” she whispered. “I can't be late.”

“What? Seriously, Em? We're talking about our friendship here and you're worried about your dad and getting to class on time? What is he going to do, make you write a ten-page paper on the importance of punctuality?” Abby stood and grabbed her bag. “If you want to hang out with us, let us know.”

Sarah stayed quiet, inspecting Emily's face like a seasoned detective, sniffing out the clues and realizing Emily wasn't talking about her next class.

“Come on, Sarah,” Abby called over her shoulder.

Sarah squeezed Emily's hand and said, “We'll talk later, okay?”