American Girls(5)

If only my sister were my mom. “Overrated,” she said when I told her that once. “Cora was my sister-mom, and we’re a real portrait of functionality, right?”

I’d heard stories about my mom in the old days, how she would take Delia on dates with her when she couldn’t find a sitter, or the time they took off for the World Series of Poker in Vegas because my mom had a dream that she was going to win big. The mom I got, Cora 2.0, always made me call her Mom, and until their divorce she and Dad were sort of like the living room furniture—around, but nothing to notice. I guess they were fine, but they definitely weren’t fun. When my sister talked about Cora, it was like she knew a totally different person.

I thought that maybe my mom was going to call back and I was going to be forced to get on the phone to apologize, but after my sister clicked off the second time, the phone never rang. While Delia was learning her lines, I sent Doon a message: “In LA. Hiding from Mom and Lynette. May have taken a credit card.” Doon said I was evil for leaving without her, but she was on top of the credit card situation. She told me that I should Google “punishments for stealing” so that I would be ready for anything when I talked to my mom. Then she said that she’d read that Freekmonkee was recording a new album, and that the band had moved into a neighborhood not far from my sister’s. She signed off with, “PLS buy me ticket! TRAITOR!!!!! JK. Not!”

We figured out a while ago that my mom likes to get advice from the Internet. After reading about how a child who steals probably already feels ashamed enough (please God, let her decide that I’ve suffered enough!), I found a site that showed a truck running over the arm of a boy who’d been caught stealing in Iran, only it turned out that the picture was a fake and it was just a scam for money. Then I searched those death trucks in China that my sister was talking about, and they looked like the kind of RVs that I used to think would be fun to take on vacation, where you could shower and poop and sleep and wake up in New Mexico, only in China they were sleek and black like giant police cars, and you woke up dead. I wondered if Doon had heard about those. I was pretty sure she hadn’t, so I sent her a link to a page. China definitely sounded worse than Atlanta, even if my sister swore by Chinese doctors.

While I was surfing the Web, I started getting more and more nervous, like I was going to have a panic attack. So I Googled “panic attack” and decided that I didn’t want to start having those at fifteen, but it didn’t make my chest feel any less tight. I don’t think I missed my mom and I know I didn’t miss Lynette, but I wondered if Birch had noticed I was gone. At night, he liked to bring me this book about a duck and a cat and an owl who make soup out of pumpkins. I’d make these big slurping noises and he would die laughing, and when Birch laughs it’s pretty disgusting in terms of cute. I wondered if he brought the book to Lynette, or what they told him had happened to me. He wouldn’t have understood either way, but I kind of wished now that I had said good-bye, or left him a picture of me by a plane.

In the other room, I could hear my sister practicing her lines. It pumps. It bleeds. But does it feel? Her bed felt like the bed in a hotel, with white-white sheets and pillows everywhere, and the room smelled faintly of roses. Do you love me? Or do you just think you love me? What is it beating inside of you? From through the wall, those same lines over and over. Louder, then soft. Scared. Happy. Excited.

Alone.





2

When I woke up, my sister was already awake in the other room, doing sun salutations and drinking Chinese tea. There was nothing to eat in the refrigerator. Nothing in the cupboards, either. My sister had a blender that could pulverize the nastiest of vegetables, but only month-old apples and powders to put in it. If someone had wired her jaw shut, she probably wouldn’t have had to change her diet. When I’d been away from my sister for months, I only remembered the good things about her—that she was funny and stylish and always had great stories about famous people. When reality sunk in, I remembered that she ate salads without dressing when she was starving and seemed to assume that I would just want to do the same. I found two peanuts in the crumpled bag from the airplane at the bottom of my purse. Delia had sworn she would take us grocery shopping, but I knew that meant “in this lifetime,” not “this morning.”

“Can we go get some breakfast?”

My stomach whimpered like a sad dog.

“Why? Are you treating?” My sister’s ass was in the air, and it was pretty clear from looking at it that breakfast was not on her daily list of concerns. I should have Googled “flat-out evil” and crossed it with her butt to predict how she’d respond.

“This isn’t a vacation,” she said. “And I’m not made of money.”

“I never said you were.”

Delia had sunk back into child’s pose. She let out a long, measured breath and shifted back into downward-facing dog.

“There should be an apple in the bottom drawer. You can have that.”

“An apple isn’t breakfast. Not even for horses.”

“Well, today it’s going to have to be. It’s zombie day off, so we’re meeting Roger at eleven thirty, and Dex comes back Friday, so we’ll hit the market at some point, but there’s not much I can do about breakfast this morning. Dex may have found a job for you, so make sure to thank him.”