Mothered (29)

“To the store,” Hope called back.

“You don’t even have any money!”

This time Hope ignored her and kept motoring away. Grace was torn. Though Mommy insisted “anything could happen” if Hope were left on her own, they were eleven years old, not babies. And Grace often went to the store by herself or with Hope in tow. Her sister wanted to be more independent—shouldn’t they let her?

“Fine,” Grace mumbled. She tried to concentrate on her homework again. But when she couldn’t hear Hope anymore, she got uneasy. She didn’t want to be Hope’s keeper, but if one of them got in trouble for her escapade, it would be Grace. Her heart full of hate, she tossed aside her book and went chasing after her sister.

By the time she got to the sidewalk, Hope was at the end of the block, making the left turn toward the market.

“Hope!” She bellowed as loud as she could, but Hope either couldn’t hear her or pretended not to. Grace took off running again.

The Jablonski brothers—with their chronic scowls and grunge—stopped popping wheelies in the street when she raced by. They said something nasty about “Hope the Retard, running away from home,” but Grace didn’t have time for her usual profane reply (she knew quite a few choice words, as did the other kids on her street). Hope was about as far from mentally slow as a person could be, but in Grace’s current mood she, too, was having uncharitable thoughts about her sister. Like, maybe she could sabotage Hope’s wheelchair after they got home so she couldn’t do this again.

If Grace flunked out of school it would be Hope’s fault. Grace knew she could do better in most of her classes, but she always did her homework in a rush and barely read her assignments because Hope needed some soup, Hope needed help with the mechanics of her own homework (Why didn’t Grace get some credit for that?), Hope needed her to get this, get that, do this, do that. Grace was about to end the pursuit and go home, let her sister deal on her own with the fallout of her dumb ideas, but then she heard a scream.

To anyone else it would’ve sounded like a garbled nothing: “Hellm! Grayyyhell!”

Grace heard it for what it was, “Help me! Grace, help!”

As Grace rounded the left onto the next street she saw Hope half a block away, being lifted out of her wheelchair. Beside it was a car, its back door open. Someone was trying to kidnap Hope.

“Stop! Help!” Grace cried out, but there wasn’t an adult around to see what was happening. She flew forward as Hope thrashed in her kidnapper’s arms. “Leave her alone!”

The kidnapper ignored Grace’s demand. The kidnapper, a woman, deposited Hope in the back seat of her car and slammed the door shut. Grace curled her hands into tight fists, ready to lunge, ready to brawl. Then the woman, smiling, turned to face her. And Grace stumbled to a halt.

She recognized the kidnapper, but her mind shuddered like an earthquake at the impossibility of it.

It was Lexis. Lexis of Lexis224U. But wait. Young Grace didn’t know her . . . Yet she knew her. From within the car, Hope pounded on the window, screaming to be let out.

On some level Grace knew this wasn’t happening, knew it wasn’t real. But she couldn’t just let Lexis drive away with her sister.

“Let her go!” Grace commanded, sounding braver than she felt.

Lexis wasn’t as pretty as she’d looked in her pictures. Greasy hair hung in her face, and her skinny limbs were all bone. Her smile revealed brown teeth and gaps. “Why do you care, Jamison?” she snarled. “You’re sick of looking after her. I’m doing you a favor.”

“How did you get here?” Grace asked, dumbfounded, because Lexis lived in Phoenix (unless she’d been lying about everything too)—and they wouldn’t meet, even virtually, for another twenty-five years.

“I told you secrets. About my life. Things I’ve never told anyone. And you’re not even a real person!” Spit, as brown as her teeth, flew from Lexis’s mouth. Grace cringed.

“I’m real,” Young Grace said meekly, inching backward as Lexis advanced.

“You don’t need this bullshit.” Grace wasn’t sure which bullshit Lexis was referring to—the catfishing or her sister. “If you’re sad and lonely it’s your own damn fault.”

Lexis was so much taller than Grace, so much stronger (in her emaciated state, her tendons looked like steel cables). Grace stood frozen as Lexis returned to her car in one elongated stride and got behind the wheel. As Hope pleaded—slapping the window, her eyes on Grace—the car sped away.

Grace felt something tearing—her skin, unzippering from her neck down. When it was loose enough, she pulled her arms out of the skin sleeves. Freed each leg like she was peeling off a pair of itchy tights. She left the skin facade on the sidewalk, with its crumpled facial features and limbs like flesh-colored noodles. What did she look like now? Pink tissue and red blood and white bits of bone? Like poor Goober. She knew what she felt like: a monster.

She dragged herself home, unsure how she’d explain to Mommy what had happened. Salty tears started to fall, but she blinked and snuffled them back up so they wouldn’t burn the open wounds of her newly exposed face.





19


Grace awakened to the gut punch of guilt. Hope had been kidnapped by someone Grace knew—someone she’d lied to—and Grace hadn’t been able to save her. The fact that Hope hadn’t been kidnapped in real life was little consolation given the real-life fact that she was dead. Before she could deep dive into interpreting the nightmare, she picked up her phone—and practically shrieked with delight as she saw a text from Miguel, sent just twenty minutes earlier.