Call It What You Want(8)

Watching my sister with a lacrosse stick reminds me of Rob Lachlan. Dad always says that kids aren’t responsible for the crimes of their parents—but if he picks up a teenager for committing a crime, he also says it’s not hard to see where they learned it. Rob’s father stole millions from other families in town. Even if Rob didn’t know about it, his father had to have some kind of entitled disregard for everyone else, to be able to steal from people—some people who truly had nothing to lose. That kind of attitude would have to bleed down to his son, right?

I think of his voice when he said, I don’t want to be partners with anyone.

Disregard? Or something else? I can’t tell.

I sigh and unlatch the back door. Samantha doesn’t turn. The ball keeps flying to the rebounder and back.

“You look like you’re feeling better,” I offer.

She says nothing. The ball continues arcing back and forth.

I wonder if I should be feeling badly for Samantha, too. But like Rob, she doesn’t make it easy. She’s been so snappish since she got home.

Then again, so have I.

“Want me to practice with you?” I’m not as good as she is, but I can play well enough to give her more variety than a stretch of elastic on a frame.

“I don’t really want company right now.”

Her voice is sharp, with an edge of something I can’t figure out. Despite everything that happened between us, she’s still my sister. “Are you okay?”

She doesn’t answer.

I edge off the steps of the porch and into the crunching leaves of the backyard. “Sam?”

Still nothing. When I reach her side, I see that tears have dried in streaks through her makeup.

My sister rarely cries. She dislocated her shoulder once, and she was barking orders at the paramedics from where she lay on the lacrosse field.

A sudden chill sweeps over me. Mom’s voice from this morning, when she said my sister was still trying to decide what to do about the baby.

Did she go get an abortion? Without waiting for anyone to go with her? Mom and Dad are still at work, for god’s sake. I’ve only been gone for six hours.

But that would be so much like Samantha. She would make a decision and execute the plan without any input from anyone else.

“What happened?” I say softly.

“I told you I don’t want company,” she says. “But I guess no one cares what I want.”

“Sam. Do you—do you want me to call Mom?”

“No. God, no.” She swipes at her face. But then she says, “David blocked me.”

David. So it’s got nothing to do with the baby at all. “Who’s David?” But as I’m saying the words, I realize I’m being stupid. “Oh. Oh.”

Sam glances at me. “Yeah.” Another swipe of her cheeks. “He’s the father.”

I swallow. “He blocked you?”

“Everywhere.” The ball flies at the net with a sudden viciousness. “I can’t call him. I can’t text him. I’m completely blocked on social media. Blocked.”

I have so many questions. “Does he—does he know?”

The ball sails into her net and she stops throwing to look at me with absolute disdain. “Yeah, Maegan. He knows. Come on.”

I take a step back. Swallow. “So—did you break up?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening.” Her voice cracks. “I didn’t—I don’t know what to do.”

“With David?” I hesitate. I know so little of my sister’s life lately. She doesn’t tell me anything anymore. “Or with the baby?”

“I don’t know what to do about any of it.” She drops the stick and presses her fingers into her eyes.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to get Mom?”

“No.” She reacts with surprising venom. “I can’t talk to her right now. And Dad—Dad is so disappointed …”

I don’t know what to do. We used to do everything together. When Samantha first got her driver’s license, she’d take me places all the time. The movies. For ice cream. To dinner, where we’d pretend to be adults, having a nice evening out, scraping together stray dollars from our wallets to pay.

We haven’t done anything like that in ages. Even Sam distanced herself from me, as if my misdeeds could somehow rub off on her.

My sister is crying full out now, her face in her hands.

I take a breath. “Do you want to go to dinner?”

She slides her hands down. “Really?”

For the first time since she got home on Friday, she sounds vulnerable. Samantha, a girl who’s so fierce on the lacrosse field that she earned the nickname “the Jackal.”

Rachel and I used to call her “the Dog,” but Samantha doesn’t need to know that.

“Yeah,” I say to her blotchy, tear-streaked face. I reach out and give her arm a squeeze. “Really.”



Taco Taco used to be our favorite place when we were kids, but I haven’t been here in years. In my memories, the restaurant is large and loud and full of laughter. A place of warmth and love. Walking in the door today, it seems small and cramped, with broken painted tiles on the wall and torn vinyl seats. The warm sense of family is gone, and I wonder if it wasn’t part of the restaurant at all, but something we brought with us.