Emergency Contact(77)

“Oh,” said Penny weakly. “Hey.”

Jude rolled her eyes. “Why aren’t you going home?” said Jude. She grabbed clean clothes and angrily packed them into a bag. “I accepted your mother’s friend request.”

Jude’s stabs at vengeance continued to be the best.

“Jude,” Penny begged. “Please talk to me. I know I should have told you. It wasn’t on purpose and nothing crazy happened. We’re friends. It wasn’t planned and then we didn’t know when to . . .”

“Oh, so you’re a ‘we’ now.”

“Jude, I’m sorry,” Penny said. “It’s a misunderstanding. . . .” Penny pleaded. “It’s not a big deal if you would let me explain.”

“I know it’s not a big deal to you,” said Jude, slamming a drawer. “I know intellectually that you’re allowed to be friends with whoever you want. Same goes for Sam. Which is why I don’t get it. If you’re just friends, if it’s no big deal, why go through all this trouble of hiding it from me? It’s like you’re just shady to be shady, and I hate that.”

She zipped her bag up. “You know, I made such an effort to be nice to both of you,” she said. “I invited you guys to lunch, dinner, movies. Would it have killed you to include me in your plans? You’re both from here. Other than Mallory, I don’t know anyone. Do you know what that feels like? God, you must’ve thought I was so annoying. That I couldn’t take a hint.”

Penny’s heart sank as Jude shouldered her bag.

Jude was right. Of course she was right.

“You know, you do this to everyone,” Jude said, swinging open the door. “You do this to your mom. You do it to me. Mallory, too, even if you don’t care about her. . . . You shut people out with no explanation. It’s so rude and mean. And for what? For a guy who you know doesn’t even like you like that?”

Penny blanched. Spoken out loud, Penny’s actions sounded pathetic even to her own ears.

“I make a good friend, Penny,” Jude said. “You didn’t even give me a chance.”

Penny’s phone rang. She glanced down at it as a reflex.

“Christ,” fumed Jude. She slammed the door behind her.

The number was a 210 area code. Knowing Celeste, she was drunk-dialing her, thinking she was slick by using a friend’s phone. Either that or she lost her purse. Again.

Penny answered.

“Hello?” A man’s voice.

“Hello?” Penny bolted upright.

“Hi. Is this Penelope?” Penny’s heart leapt into her throat.

“Yeah,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

She imagined Celeste dead in a ditch.

“Penny, this is your mom’s friend Michael.”

She tasted acid. “Is it my mom? Is she okay?”

She pictured twisted metal, deranged gunmen, torch-wielding neo-Nazis. . . .

“I’m with your mom,” the voice said. “She’s fine. We’re at Metropolitan Methodist. . . .”

Penny’s head cracked wide open and all she heard were the lambs screaming.

The hospital.

“I’m coming right now,” she said.

“Good, good,” he stammered. “She’s fine but . . . um, okay. I’ll be here.”

Penny did not know a Michael among Celeste’s fiends. Her mother had a rotating cast of besties, though Penny didn’t have their numbers. Truth was, she was her mom’s emergency contact, and despite that fact, Penny hadn’t been there for her. Penny stared at her phone. She couldn’t feel her face, and a wave of nausea engulfed her. Okay, she couldn’t call Jude. Mallory was Jude’s friend, so that was out. She called Sam.





SAM.


Sam ran to Kincaid with his backpack. He didn’t know why he’d brought it, only that they were going somewhere and that Penny appreciated supplies. He’d packed water, a Tupperware container of leftover sheet cake, spoons, an extra sweatshirt, and a hard-case first-aid kit that Al kept in the kitchen. Penny had said nothing of where they were going, though she’d been unnervingly subdued on the phone. Robotic in a way that was worrisome.

All he knew was that it had to do with her mom. Sam wondered how Penny would cope if Celeste died. As much as Penny complained about her, she would probably fall to pieces if something bad happened.

Sam remembered one of their earliest conversations about Penny’s mom.

EMERGENCY PENNY

Oct 5, 2:14 PM

I bet I’m bad at death As in you suck at it therefore you’re invincible?

No bad at processing it

Nobody I’ve been close to died

Lucky

I’m great at death


In tenth grade the uncle Sam was closest to died of cancer, the same summer two of his friends were killed in a drunk-driving accident.

Sometimes I watch my mother sleep

and pretend she’s dead

I cry and cry and cry

because I love her so much

but also don’t want her to know


He’d thought about Brandi Rose and what he’d do if she died.

I’d be all alone if she was gone


Penny was waiting for him downstairs when he arrived. Her hair was extra big. Penny threw a crumpled twenty-dollar bill at him and it bounced off his chest and fell to the floor. She was wild-eyed.