You Take It From Here (21 page)

This was not when Smidge was at her finest. She tossed her used wet-nap into the pile of refuse. “I will be mad, Vikki, if you keep talking about this over my crawfish.”

“You’ll talk to me later, then?” Vikki moved her hand across the back of my chair, sliding along the dark oak. A damp palm print remained near my shoulder.

“We’ll see!” Smidge sang, and in that second I hated her. It was an instant fury, a flash flood of anger for pretending any of this was about Vikki. I knew Smidge wasn’t mad at her. With all that was going on, she just forgot she existed. But there was no way Smidge would ever cop to being neglectful. To her, it was better to have Vikki feel scared than indignant.

Vikki gave pleading looks to each of us, but Henry busied himself stacking crawfish shells, forcing some kind of order to the situation. Tucker fiddled with a toothpick, looking absolutely carefree. All I could give was a weak shoulder shrug.

“You people,” Vikki marveled before she turned and left.

“She was with her husband anyway,” Henry said as a consolation.

“Hey, spider lady,” Tucker said, pointing his toothpick at Smidge. “Tell me, does it feel better when you trap them in your web, or is the real fun later when you suck the blood out of their struggling bodies?”

I’ve always admired the way some people can be threatening while remaining still. My emotions take over; I always sound exactly how I’m feeling. But Tucker practically had his feet up on the table, that’s how cool he was.

Smidge stood, adding enough dramatic flair to make her chair scrape along the wooden floor. There was an offended look plastered across her face, but I could tell she was already over the whole thing. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t about Vikki.

“I’m going to the bathroom.” Her announcement was directed so sharply at me I halfway expected to be teleported there merely by the power of her thoughts.

As I took to my feet, Tucker gave his lap a double strike with one hand. “Go on, little doggie!” he grunted before slapping another
pat-pat
against his thigh. “Your master’s calling you!”

No matter how deep into the restaurant I got as I headed toward the bathroom in search of Smidge, Tucker’s laughter found me.

“Vikki’s right.” He chuckled. “This is a great tradition!”

SIXTEEN

O
nce inside the bathroom, I ducked my head to spot Smidge’s legs peeking from underneath a stall. She was on her knees. One of her strappy yellow heels was tangled in a lengthy strip of toilet paper. Her other shoe was overturned, the stiletto angled toward the sky like a dangerous weapon. The stall door was closed.

“Smidge? Are you sick? Are you throwing up?”

“No, but I can’t stop gagging.”

The struggle sounding from deep inside her body was as if her organs were wrestling each other, trying to break free. Eventually she fell into softer sputters and spits. “Block the door!” she shouted, her words echoing through the hollow of the white-tiled bathroom. “I can’t have someone walking in on this.”

Trembling with adrenaline, I found myself trying to jam a wicker chair underneath the doorknob, a move I knew only from television shows, and had no proof actually worked. There was no lock; I didn’t know what else to do. Eventually I opted to sit in the chair, hoping my weight would be enough.

“I’ve got the door,” I said. “Are you okay?”

Beside my head was a framed old black-and-white photo. A young girl held an umbrella and a damp kitten. She had huge, sad eyes, looking like her entire world had been crushed now that her pet had gotten wet. I could feel the judgment in her eyes as she transferred her disappointment with the weather onto me.

Are you really listening to your best friend cough up a lung in the bathroom of a seafood restaurant and all you can come up with is “Are you okay?” Next, why not ask her, “Do you think it’s the cancer?”

From inside the stall, Smidge gasped, “Oh, shit.”

Dropping to my hands and knees, I crawled over to her as close as I could, while keeping one foot firmly pressed against the chair. I stayed ready to spring back to the door if I needed to. Reaching under the stall, I found her arm and squeezed. Her hand was cold and trembling.

“There’s blood, Danny,” she whispered, and then exhaled a shaky, shocked sob. “I don’t like it when it looks real.”

“Let me in. Unlock the door.”

She didn’t. Instead she rocked back and forth on her heels, clutching my hand to her chest as if she were praying. I could feel her breath hot on my fingertips. My arm was bent at a strange angle, but I didn’t dare adjust myself. We stayed like that for a moment as I tried to come up with something to say.

Then Smidge asked, “Did you know Alexa Chambers was a whore?”

“Who?”

“I’m just reading the stall wall in front of me. That’s what someone wrote. ‘Alexa Chambers is a useless whore.’”

“Well, it needed to be said.”

“Gimme something to write with.”

I crawled over to my purse and to my surprise found a black Sharpie tucked inside a notebook. While Smidge was busy working up her rebuttal, I busied myself washing my hands.

The stall door swung open. Smidge was already collected, fluffing her hair. But she hadn’t seen what I could see: a small line of blood smearing from the corner of her mouth up toward her ear. Quickly I wet a paper towel and handed it over as I pushed past her, pretending I desperately wanted to read what she’d written, giving her a moment of privacy to clean her face.

Underneath
Alexa Chambers is a useless whore
was Smidge’s unmistakable handwriting, neat and curved like a schoolteacher’s.

While you are wasting your life writing on the bottom of a shit-stained wall, Alexa’s out getting laid. Life is short. Flush your tampons.

“Kinda long,” I noted.

Smidge smiled, all traces of illness erased from her face. “I like a lengthy legacy,” she said.

“And I don’t think you’re supposed to flush tampons.”

“I am not leaving my DNA in a box next to a toilet, bouncing around with other tampons. That’s disgusting.”

A spine-bending screech filled the bathroom as the wicker chair clattered to the floor. Vikki entered, confused at the commotion she’d just caused.

“Vikki!” Smidge cheered, sounding like this was the one person she’d been hoping for. She bounded toward her with
arms outstretched. “Come here, girl.” Smidge latched an arm around Vikki’s freckled shoulder and leaned in close enough to kiss that parrot. “Did you really think we didn’t want you to come to dinner? I was just playing with you.”

“What?”

“We were in here trying to figure out the best way to tell you it was a joke.”

Vikki gave me a horrible look. “It was
not
funny,” she said. “So, you’re not mad at me?”

“Mad at you? Vikki, to be honest, it seemed more like you were mad at me! You hadn’t been coming around and I know you’re jealous of Danielle.”

What your mother did there was one of her special skills. Vikki was immediately on the defense.

“I’m not jealous of Danielle! Why would I be?”

“Well, I figured you thought she was taking your place, which she’s
not
.”

I never knew what to say or do when your mother was busy manipulating women. It felt like being the world’s worst wingman. I usually ended up standing there mute. Since my silence could be easily misinterpreted as disdain, I’d lost more than one friend over the years when they figured I was on Smidge’s side.

We got home from Plantation of the Sea that night only to have things turn worse.

If you haven’t yet remembered which night this was, let me start by telling you that you weren’t there when we got back. It was the first time you’d ever broken curfew. You didn’t
answer your phone immediately when your mother called. Instead you texted back something brilliant like,
1 sec.

Your stall was enough to let Smidge know her daughter wasn’t lying in a ditch, the place all mothers assume missing children end up. Once you were proven alive, she was free to plot the demise of her offspring. She paced between your bedroom and the kitchen, stopping only to take another sip of wine.
“One sec!”
she yelled in astonishment. “
One sec!
Like I am writing to her from
homeroom
.”

Your next text was the famous one, the line that still makes me laugh every time I think of it. It was just so desperate and bumbled.

It read:
Don’t call Angie’s mom.

Which is what your mother immediately did, which is how she learned you were never at safe, nerdy friend Angela’s house, but somewhere else entirely.

This is when Tucker turned and asked, “Do you want to go sit on the porch with me to wait this one out?”

“Aren’t you going home?”

“Aren’t you?”

I stopped, my hand on my hip. “What is with you tonight?”

“I bet you’d like to find out,” he said, grabbing two beers from the fridge.

Henry appeared in the doorway, blocking the entrance to the hall. He braced the frame with his hands, eyes closed as he took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

Smidge’s voice poured over his shoulder from the other room. “This is the night I am going to stand there and watch while you kill her!” she shrieked. “If you loved me, Henry, you would do this for me! Kill her slowly. Kill her twice.”

Tucker flicked his finger against the small of my back. “Last chance,” he said, quickening his pace toward the porch. I followed him out the door.

Our feet were propped up on the ledge between two thick, potted ferns as we shared the small bench. I tried to smooth my skirt over as much of my legs as possible, determined to feel casual despite my outfit’s restrictions.

“It’s okay,” Tucker said. “I’m not looking.”

He slid one of the open beers into my hand. I took a moment to hold the wet bottle to my forehead, cooling my skin. “Maybe I’ve already had too much to drink,” I said. “This night feels endless. And this day has been going on for seven years.”

I closed my eyes as I rested my head against the sturdy wood of the house. The porch light’s hum vibrated the beams, making my skull buzz.

This is when Tucker kissed me, hesitant and soft, but like he’d done it before a thousand times. I was so shocked, it took me a few seconds to realize I was tipping my bottle. Beer splashed onto my thighs in a bubbling froth, splattering onto the floor.

I jumped, but not before Tucker accidentally bit my upper lip.

“Wow,” he said. “That did not go like I thought it would.”

He dabbed at my leg with the bottom of his shirt, apologizing. But there was too much beer and not enough shirt. In a final effort to soak up the mess, he dragged his hat across my knee.

He looked different without his cap. I stared down at the mop of Tucker’s blond curls. He looked all of seventeen
again, on his knees and awkward around me. The superhero in him deflated.

Those walls we build and fortify so purposefully crumble beyond our control in seconds, long before we’d ever suspect they’d give out. We’re all just trying to make it through the day without accidentally showing up to a dinner where we were not invited, coughing up blood in a bathroom stall, or wiping beer off a girl’s leg with a battered baseball cap.

“I’m okay,” I said as I gently placed my hand on his chest. I could feel his heart pounding through the fabric of his button-down. “It’s okay. You can get up.”

“I’m really sorry.” He searched my mouth for blood.

“Is it swollen?” I asked.

“Like you got kissed by a hornet.”

There were no more attempts at affection. We finished our beers quietly and then he left with a cowboy tip of his hat.

I lingered over the memory of Tucker’s mouth on mine, not only because I liked it, but because it felt like I had just cheated on my best friend.

By the time you came home I was already in bed, but I could hear the fallout over the next three hours. You’d been out on a secret movie date with that boy Aubrey; you knew your parents wouldn’t have let you go. Smidge finally got you to admit that you held hands at this movie, and I believe she called you something just shy of what poor Alexa Chambers was accused of on the bathroom wall at Plantation of the Sea.