Anything but Ordinary(18)

“The toilet was clean,” Sydney’s voice corrected, and Bryce heard the sounds of retching.

Bryce tried not to feel nauseous herself. The potpourri and decrepit lace that covered every surface of the old Southern house didn’t help.

“Girls?” their mother called from down the hall. “Everything okay?”

Bryce slipped into the bathroom, holding her nose. “Mom’s coming,” she said, panicky. Sydney shrugged from her kneeling position on the cracked tile.

“Yep, Sydney’s just having stomach issues,” Bryce called, peeking from behind the door. “Must have been bad cream cheese.”

“Don’t even bother,” Sydney said, still halfway inside the bowl. “They know I’m hung over.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Bryce said.

“Don’t,” Sydney replied shortly. “You can leave now.”

Bryce sighed. That morning, her mom had helped her upstairs to see her dad and Sydney gathered in the kitchen, Sydney’s eye makeup running from the night before.

“Family outing,” Sydney had muttered, and they piled into the van.

Her face had become increasingly pale on the winding drive to the other edge of Nashville. Their mother chattered up front about how they used to go to Belle Meade when the girls were small.

“Y’all just loved the horses,” her mom had said, adopting the accent of the reenactors who wandered the historical plantation in Civil War–era clothes.

Sydney had put her arms inside her oversized Ramones T-shirt and swallowed what was probably puke.

Now she stood up from the toilet, wiping her mouth. Her face was still tinged green.

“You look like a kid on one of those Just Say No posters,” Bryce said.

“You would know all about being a poster child, wouldn’t you?” Sydney responded, scrunching her brunette curls in the mirror.

Bryce stood beside Sydney. They were the same height and had the same hazel eyes. Their dad’s eyes. Dad’s dark eyebrows. Their mother’s ski-jump nose. If Bryce pushed back her waves, the blond disappearing, they nearly looked like twins. Minus the lip-piercing and heavy eyeliner. Bryce wondered vaguely what Sydney would look like now if she had been around.

“What is it like to be hung over?” she asked Sydney’s pale reflection.

Sydney made a face and turned to her sister. “I don’t know, Bryce. What is it like to wake up from a coma?”

“Touché,” Bryce said.

Their mother was waiting around the corner of the creaky mansion corridor with a new piece of plantation trivia, a small shopping bag hanging from her wrist. Their father looked comically out of place near the grand staircase, staring up at portraits in his Vanderbilt T-shirt and athletic shorts.

“You remember this one, Bryce?”

He pointed to an intricate portrait of a woman in a blue hoop skirt, her fan poised as it would be on a sweltering day like today. Her hair was slicked and her rouge formed perfect small circles, but she had a sparkle in her eye like she had just done something she shouldn’t.

“The Southern Mona Lisa.” Bryce smiled.

Her mother let out a happy sigh and wrapped Bryce in a hug.

Sydney twisted her curls into a messy bun and grabbed her phone from a nearby table. “I’m going back out to the car,” she announced.

Bryce’s father looked at Sydney, his lips in a straight line. “We just got here.”

Her mother shot her dad a look. “Are you sure, sweetie?” she said awkwardly, her arm around Bryce. “You want some pop or something?”

“Nah, you don’t need me now that the prodigal daughter has returned.” Sydney gestured to Bryce.

“Come on, Syd. Don’t be like that,” Bryce said.

“Screw off, Bryce,” Sydney said with a fake smile, and she turned to the door.



They decided to call it a day when her mom stepped in a pile of droppings left by the geese that roamed the front lawn. Though her dad laughed a little too heartily, he bent over with an old newspaper to wipe off his wife’s loafers. When Bryce saw Sydney again, she was leaning against the whitewashed fence, staring at the horses as she massaged her head.

The sycamores seemed oddly still to Bryce without the constant chirp of cicadas, but they didn’t come out until sunset. Her father used to wager he could hear them even in the daytime, if everyone held their breath for a long time, as quiet as they could be. Bryce could never really be sure if she could actually hear them, or if it was just that she wanted to believe him.

She stepped lightly underneath the mossy branches, only hobbling slightly, her legs sore from the constant effort. Dr. Warren said her body would never be at its best again, but what did she know? Bryce fanned herself against the wet heat.

And then she heard it, brief but clear: the high, chirping cry of a cicada. At first it echoed like it came from far away, and then it seemed to push through the silence and join with another call right next to her, as full and clear as if it were beside her ear. Bryce moved a hand up to touch it, but nothing was there. I knew that, she mused. They’re far away. I can tell. She put her hand down. They’re waiting for night. The calls came again, washing over her, making the air around her pulse.

After a moment, it stopped. The midday sun broke through in patches, and the trees were silent once more.