You'll Be the Death of Me(60)

MATEO


Ivy looks serious, but she’s serious about everything. Besides, I’m pretty sure I’m immune to bad news at this point.

“What’s up?” I ask, letting her guide me to Cal’s car. We climb in and he fires up his GPS again, though I don’t know why he’s bothering when he’ll probably just work his back-route magic to Carlton High.

“I…” Ivy glances at Cal as she settles herself into the passenger seat and turns to face me. “I feel like I should maybe tell you this privately, Mateo, but I don’t see us being alone anytime soon, and I don’t…I can’t not tell you, any longer.”

“Um, if this is a declaration of love, I’m happy for you,” Cal says as he starts the car. “But it’s going to get super awkward for me.”

I snort. “Eyes on the road, Cal. Nobody needs your commentary.” I expect Ivy to agree, maybe even laugh, but she just looks wretched. For the first time since she grabbed my arm, unease stirs in my gut.

    “Fine,” Cal says. “Let me activate invisible mode so the two of you can discuss nothing of importance in private.” He mimes putting a shield over his head, like the giant nerd he is. I love the kid, but he should lay off the comics occasionally.

“You know you can still hear us if you’re invisible, right?” I ask.

“Can’t hear you! Invisible!” Cal says, and I can’t help but laugh.

Ivy doesn’t, though. She’s gone silent, so I prod, “I think that’s your cue.”

“Yeah. Okay. So…” Ivy’s facing me, but she’s not really looking at me. Her eyes are on the window beside me as Cal merges onto the highway and cars start flashing past us. “It’s hard to know where to start, but…I think it would be the junior talent show, last year,” she says.

That’s so unexpected that at first I have no reaction. Then I swallow a grin. “You mean your hot-firefighter monologue?” I knew what that was about as soon as I heard it. Every time one of her aunt’s books arrived, Ivy used to read the back copy to Cal and me.

Ivy cringes. It’s obvious that still bothers her, and I wish—just like I wished when I watched from the audience last year—that she’d listen to me if I told her to let it go. Yeah, she got owned by Daniel, and it was embarrassing. But the thing she doesn’t get is that most people wanted to laugh with her, not at her. Ivy has a sense of humor, but she couldn’t pull it out when she needed it. If she’d been able to brush it off, or maybe even run with it, she could’ve won yesterday’s election by a landslide.

    And none of us would be here right now.

“Yes,” she says, twisting her hands in her lap. “I guess I don’t need to tell you that I was really upset, and humiliated, and just…so mad at Daniel. He’s always like that. He’s the star of our family, but he still tears me down every chance he gets.”

“Ivy, if you don’t get that you’re a star, too, I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.

I mean it as a compliment, so I’m surprised—and kind of horrified—when she blinks back tears. “Don’t cry,” I add urgently. “It’s not that big a deal.” I can almost hear my mother’s voice in my head, saying the same thing she used to say back when Autumn first came to live with us and her rage would dissolve into tears: Tears are healthy. I’d be more worried if she didn’t cry.

But that was over losing her parents. Not being embarrassed at school.

“I’m not upset about the talent show,” Ivy says. “Not anymore. This is about…what I did after.” She swallows hard. “When I tried to get back at Daniel.”

“Get back at Daniel?” I echo. “What, like—revenge?”

“Yeah,” Ivy says. “I wanted him to know what it’s like to be the laughingstock of the school. I didn’t know how, exactly, but I wanted to do something.”

I’d laugh if she didn’t look so miserable. The idea of straight-laced Ivy Sterling-Shepard plotting against her jackass brother is pretty entertaining, even if I can’t imagine why she thought it would work. Daniel’s way too full of himself to care what other people think about him. “So what’d you land on?” I ask.

“Well, that’s the problem. I was waiting for the right opportunity, but it never came, and then…I was supposed to pick him up at Patrick DeWitt’s birthday party last June. The one he had at Spare Me.”

    The uneasy feeling comes back. Not just because that’s our former bowling alley, but because that was the party. The one that ruined everything. “Yeah?” I say cautiously.

“Yeah.” Ivy flushes brick red. “So Daniel texted me to pick him up early because he was bored. But by the time I got there, he’d decided that he didn’t want to leave anymore. The guys had started filming themselves doing tricks, and they were posting the videos on Instagram. Daniel was getting all pumped up because he kept bowling strikes with his eyes closed, or backward, or hopping on one foot. He told me to leave, but I was like—what’s the point? I’ll just have to come back in an hour. So I sat there and felt annoyed, and started organizing bags from the errands I’d just run for my mom and…I got an idea.”