The Memory Book(24)

I watched her scrunch her eyebrows together in the rearview mirror. “Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Is this true?”

Pause. “Yes.”

Maddie made eye contact with me in the mirror. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since winter break.” We pulled up to the end of my driveway, and as Pat’s car started to kick up gravel on the steep hill, I said, “It’s okay, you can stop here. I’ll walk up.”

“Sammie—Jesus. I’m sorry.” Maddie didn’t sound sorry. She sounded mad. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

I unbuckled my seat belt and lifted my bag. All my papers fell out. Sheets printed with round times, scores, a welcome map of Boston. “I thought you wouldn’t want to be partners with me,” I muttered, gathering the pile.

Maddie made a sound between disgust and sadness. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

“Not because of you rejecting me as a friend or whatever, just because you might have thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” I said, shoving papers in clumps on the seat.

“That’s not the point!” Maddie yelled, then said quieter. “You lied to me!”

Pat reached behind her to touch Maddie’s knee. “Girls, why don’t you give yourselves some space?”

“Well…” Maddie made another sound, breathing air through her nose. “Isn’t that convenient.”

“What?” I said, almost ripping my bag as I closed the zipper. “What did I do this time?”

“You just drop bombs and leave,” she was saying under her breath out the window. “That’s the Sammie McCoy way. Just droppin’ truth bombs. Who cares what comes after?”

“Thanks, Pat,” I said to Maddie’s mom, forcing a smile, and slammed the door.

As I walked away I heard Maddie’s window roll down. “I’m sorry you’re sick but you can’t pretend you didn’t wait on purpose to tell me right when we got to your house!”

“Maddie,” I heard Pat say behind me.

I turned around. “What does it matter when I tell you? I’m telling you! It’s my thing! I get to decide!”

“Exactly,” Maddie yelled as they reversed. “You control everything!”

“Yeah, right,” I said to no one. “Believe me, I wish.” She has no idea how wrong she is.





QUASIMODO RETURNS TO THE BELL TOWER


After fighting with Maddie, all I want to do is burrow into my bed with The West Wing and not come out until graduation, but I was going to get a talking-to about what happened. When I walked up the driveway, Mom stopped mowing the lawn in the middle of a row.

I had left her a voice mail last night. She’d called three or four times until I texted her back. I would rather just have a conversation about it, I told her, and I needed to recover from losing Nationals.

“Hey,” Mom called across the yard as I stalked toward the front door. “Hey!’

“Give me a minute,” I told her, almost running inside.

Now here we were, in person, and I couldn’t avoid it. I could feel her energy rocking and swaying like a ship in a storm. Bette and Davy were putting a puzzle together on the floor. Dad was in the kitchen and dropped the dish he was washing when he heard me coming down the hall.

They followed me and stood in my doorway in their day-off outfits, Mom in ripped jeans and a Mickey Mouse baseball shirt, Dad in a Patriots cap and sweats.

“What happened?” Dad asked.

As I unpacked, I gave them a careful summary, being sure to leave out the curse words and the sobbing. Before I could finish, Mom came across the room and yanked me up into a hug.

“I shouldn’t have let you go,” she said quietly.

“It wasn’t that bad,” I said, my heart trying to decide between sadness and anger. “Not going would have been worse.”

“But we weren’t there, Sammie,” she said, pulling back to look at me. Wisps of her hair were coming out, crossing her face, her eyes wet. She looked young, unsure. I didn’t like it. My stomach hurt. I didn’t like making her look like this.

“Okay.” I tried to peel her off slowly. “We’ve got to be strong. We’re going to make a plan—”

“Sammie, just slow down a minute,” Dad said, and his voice was higher than normal.

I looked back at them, waiting. “What? What do you want me to do?”

Dad swallowed. “No, I just—nothing. Do you get what I’m saying?”

No. I didn’t. Especially when he talked to me in that poor baby, Santa-Claus-doesn’t-exist voice. I threw a shirt into my closet. “I can’t slow down. I can’t stop. I can’t go back in time and not go to Nationals.”

Dad spoke fast, lifting his cap and running his hands through his curly hair. “What if you had been on the street, Sammie? What if you had forgotten where you were and wandered into a dangerous place? What if you had gotten lost?”

“We just need to make sure we can help you!” Mom put on a sweet smile through her tears. She looked and sounded just like Davy, trying to coax a chicken back into the coop. Here, chicky! Come on, chicky!

I didn’t like this conversation. I don’t like hypotheticals, especially considering I had already gotten over it. I already had my crying time about how much it sucked, and now I didn’t want those feelings to come back just because my parents wanted to cry about it. No, thank you.