Not If I See You First(56)

“But you know you can tell me, right?”

“I’m telling you now. Exploding today wasn’t you getting it all out, it was just getting the last three months out. More’s coming and you need to let it out when it does. Don’t store it up or you’ll explode again, and again, and again…”

“No more gold stars?” I sigh. “I don’t know, every time I get one it feels like I’m coping.”

“Hiding. Burying. Adding a little more gunpowder to the keg that blew up today.”

I sit up and hug Sarah as tightly as I can. “How’d you get to be so smart?”

“Experience,” she says. “Experience I wish I didn’t have.”

I let her go and lean against the headboard.

“Did something happen this morning?” Molly asks. “I mean, why today?”

“It’s her dad’s birthday,” Faith says.

“And other stuff,” I say. “You know some of it about Sarah and me… and… well, I guess I need to catch you up on a few other things.”

“First,” Faith says, “I’ve been hearing a lot about standing in front of trains. You know I certainly would if it came down to it; I just think it would be better for all of us if we didn’t have to.”

“Okay.” I smile. “No trains.”





Aunt Celia tries to get everyone to stay for dinner but nobody wants to, myself included. They all leave to go home and explain why they weren’t in school today.

I offer to help with dinner and Aunt Celia of course says she can manage, especially today, but this time I refuse her refusal. I ask what she’s making and when I hear it all I insist on making the mashed potatoes. After enough stubbornness, her desire to do something for me turns into letting me have the counter to the left of the sink. I need to ask where every single thing is since she’s rearranged everything and I haven’t been in the pantry for a while. She gives me whatever I ask for except garlic and she starts to say something about needing it for spaghetti later in the week—then she stops and says she can just get more later and hands me all the cloves she has.

Dinner is unusually quiet. Uncle Sam specifically compliments the potatoes as better than usual. Aunt Celia tells him I made them and he’s surprised. It all sounds sincere so maybe she didn’t put him up to it. Does that mean I’ll get to help cook more? Time will tell. Most of the conversation is Petey talking about the tide pools, and it’s Uncle Sam and I who talk to him the most. Sheila doesn’t say a word and goes upstairs as soon as she can. When I offer to help clean up and Aunt Celia says no thanks I let her win and head upstairs.

I pick up Sheila’s CD from my room and head to her door. I knock twice. I’m nervous and really hate it but this is long long long overdue. I have a lot to make up for, starting at home.

“Who is it?” she says in her annoyed voice, so, her normal voice.

“Just me.” I almost add your nemesis as a joke but successfully hold it back. Too soon.

When she opens the door I say, “Can I come in?”

“Um, sure… but…” She doesn’t sound annoyed now; I guess annoyed is not her normal voice. “Hang on, there’s crap all over the floor…”

She kicks at what sounds like books and laundry and who knows what else.

“There, you can sit on my bed, straight ahead.”

I step through, close the door, and slowly walk forward sweeping my arms until my hands hit the bed. I sit. She doesn’t.

“I just came to say I’m really sorry—”

“Don’t. Don’t be sorry.”

She doesn’t say it like oh, it’s okay, you don’t have to be sorry. She sounds angry, like she really doesn’t want to hear this.

“But I shouldn’t have yelled at you yesterday—”

“I deserved it. Cranking up the music was a shitty thing to do.”

Which it was, but… this is nothing like how I imagined this conversation might go.

I hold out her CD. “I can understand you not wanting me to hear you.”

The case pops out of my hand with some force. “So I blasted music at you to plug up the one working sense you had? I was yelling at you for not knowing I had stuff going on, stuff I was trying to keep you from knowing, and then I didn’t even know it was Uncle Martin’s birthday today! So now I’m a hypocrite, or just blind—f*ck, I mean… Jesus, you know what I mean.”

“Hey, Sheila, it’s okay—”

“No, I saw you this morning. I… saw… you. And you were… you were…”

I’m not sure what this means. “You probably heard me, too. Along with half the school. I’m not embarrassed about that. I had a good reason—”

“But I’ve never seen… I… I watched you at the funeral… You just sat there. And for another month you just sat around or argued with my mom, and… and… you just acted normal.”

“That wasn’t normal. And I wasn’t just sitting there. I was frozen. Losing Dad was bad enough but for a while I thought I might lose everything. If I had to move away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known, I’d have lost my mind. Seriously. Thank you. Thank you for doing it instead of me. I’ll never be able to repay it but I want to try. Whatever I can do, just ask.”