Slide (12 page)

D
inner is awkward.

Mattie sits there, twisting her spoon in her hands, avoiding eye contact with my dad. He fills our bowls with steaming chili and places them in front us silently. The chili is his way of making amends for not being around when Mattie’s dealing with her best friend’s death and for relying on me to pick up the slack. I also wonder if he’s making up for something else, maybe for not being entirely truthful with us. For keeping his relationship with whoever was on the phone earlier on the down-low.

He reaches across the table for some saltines to crumble into his chili and then asks casually—almost
too
casually, “So what happened with Amber today, Mattie?”

Mattie stares intently at the spoon in her fist.

“She was saying some stuff about Sophie.”

“What
kind
of stuff?” He takes a bite, chews methodically, never looking away from Mattie’s face.

After a long pause, Mattie says, “She was saying Sophie was pregnant with Scotch Becker’s baby.”

My father swallows, frowns. “And why would that upset you?”

Mattie drums her spoon on the table. “Because she said that’s why Sophie killed herself, and I know that’s not true.”

“So you hit her?”

Mattie lets her spoon fall to the table. “I didn’t hit her! She hit me. I just called her a name. I shouldn’t have been
suspended
for that.”

My dad keeps his cool. “Well, Mr. Nast can’t just allow kids to get into brawls in the hallway. He has a school to run. There have to be consequences, even if—”

“Even if what?” Mattie says, looking him in the eyes, challenging him.

“Even if you’re hurting.”

Mattie lets out a long breath. “You have
no
idea.” She then picks up her untouched bowl of chili and heads for the kitchen. I hear the dish hit the sink with a great deal of force. My dad winces.

“I’m going to bed,” Mattie announces on her way back through the dining room. She stomps up the stairs and slams her bedroom door.

My dad sighs and puts his head in his hands.

I desperately want to follow Mattie’s lead and bow out of this whole depressing family meal, but it seems cruel to let my father sit there by himself. When he raises his head, I see the tears glistening in his eyes.

“I can’t do this by myself,” he says, more to the ceiling than to me. I’m not sure how to respond. I’m not sure if I
should
respond.

“God. If only your mother were here,” he goes on. “I’m just . . . unequipped. I can’t deal with this.”

His yearning for my mother sinks into me. In that moment, I almost wish he
was
seeing someone. He needs someone in his life besides me and Mattie—someone to talk to.

I reach over and link my hand with his. “You’re doing fine, Dad. Mattie’s just upset. She’ll be okay.” I hope what I’m saying isn’t a lie.

He looks at our hands, intertwined, and a tear comes loose and spills down his cheek. He squeezes my hand and attempts a smile. “You remind me so much of your mother sometimes, Vee. She always knew just what to say. It was like she could look inside of you and know exactly what you were feeling. You’re like that.”

His words make me a little uncomfortable. Usually I feel like I know
too much
about other people—their secrets eat away at me from the inside.

“Vee. Would you do me a favor? Go to your sister. She needs help. You probably understand what she’s going through more than I ever could. You’ll know the right things to say.”

I manage a small smile. “Sure, Dad.”

My father’s phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket, glances at the display, and answers it. “Hello?” As I watch, his eyes dry up and become businesslike. “No problem. I’ll be there in a half hour.”

He hangs up and looks at me. “I’m sorry, Vee. I have to go.”

“I know,” I reply. “Go.”

Upstairs, Mattie is lying on her bed, flipping through a photo album of happier times. On one page, my mother pushes me on a swing, and my sister is visible in the background, strapped into a pink stroller. She’s reaching her arms out, like she longs to join in on the fun. The next page shows my mom and dad cooking dinner together. I am dancing between them, tasting something on a wooden spoon and making a face. She is stuck in her highchair, a mound of cereal on her tray.

I sit next to her on the bed, but she doesn’t look up. She says her words to the people in the pictures. “What do you remember about her?” She traces her finger over our mother’s smile.

“About Mom?”

Mattie nods. “I feel like I’ve forgotten everything important.”

I flop back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know. She smelled like violets. When we went on car trips, she made up stories about the constellations in the sky. They were like people to her. They all had pasts and relationships and mannerisms. She could go on for hours about the Gemini twins fighting over Andromeda.”

Mattie turns the page. “What else?”

“She ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches. She played her music loud and jumped around. She painted her toenails purple.”

Mattie examines each page in the photo album carefully, as if she’s looking for clues about who our mother was. When she reaches the final page, it’s blank. It’s always been blank. I don’t know what she was expecting. She hurls the book to the floor.

“It’s not enough,” she says, her words strangled by her sobs.

I sit up and wrap my arms around her. “I know,” I whisper. “I know it’s not enough. But listen. We’ve got each other. If you need to talk about something, you can tell me. Anything, okay?”

Mattie nods and grabs a tissue from her bedside table. I rub her back as she blows her nose. The light outside has gone dim. We are surrounded by shadows.

Eventually, my sister pulls away and rearranges herself on the bed, hugging a pillow across her chest. “Can I ask you a question, Vee?”

“Yeah.”

She picks some lint off the pillow. “Why did you stop being friends with Sam and all those guys?”

I sigh. I’d been content to let Mattie think the popular crowd rejected me just for being a geek, but the way she looks at me makes me want to tell her the truth—or at least as much of it as I can. Besides, she should know what the people she hangs around with are capable of. Maybe it will save her from putting herself in the same situation I did.

“Do you remember the purple dress?” I ask.

She bobs her head excitedly, like I knew she would. She was there when I found the dress. She was almost more excited about it than I was.

And so I tell her.

I tell her about me and Samantha both liking Scotch. I tell her I was the one he chose and about all the things Samantha did to punish me for that. I tell her about drinking in Kapler Park before the dance. I tell her about how I felt ill and passed out, and how I awoke with my dress around my waist, to the sound of Rollins’s fists hitting Scotch’s body.

The only part I leave out is the sliding, but let’s face it— it’s not necessary to the story. What happened that night could happen to anyone. It is not a unique story. But it is enough to cause my sister’s face to screw up again with tears, enough to compel her to throw her arms around me and crush me with her embrace.

It’s been a long time since I cried about that night. But for some reason, telling it all to Mattie, I see it from a different angle. My heart swells for the girl in the purple dress, for the girl with a crush who got more than she asked for. As I recall seeing it from Samantha’s eyes—Scotch dragging me into the locker room—I start to cry for the girl I once was.

And so I let my sister hug me, and when she asks me to stay in her room tonight, I oblige. It’s like when we were little, after my mom died, and she had a nightmare. She’d come into my room, and I’d hold up the covers for her to crawl under.

I watch her face as it settles into sleep. She looks so young, so raw. I’m angry for her that she didn’t have more time with our mother, that the only person she really has right now is me. These thoughts circle over my head, and before I know it, I have fallen asleep.

I’m in the middle of a carnival. A Ferris wheel spins backward and a sad clown holds a bunch of black balloons. My mother rides a purple unicorn on the merry-go-round. I see her coming my way, and she waves, her face glowing in excitement. She looks just like her pictures, young and stunning.

She looks like an angel.

I run up to the gate and press against it, calling for her. Someone taps me on the shoulder, and when I turn around, there she is. She wears ripped blue jeans and an Alice in Chains T-shirt.

“Vee,” she says, her voice soft and shimmery. She pulls me to a bench, and we sit down, hands clasped. I rest my head against her shoulder, breathing in her mother scent of powder and violets and milk.

“Mom.”

It feels good to say the word. I have so many things to ask her. How did she know she was in love with Dad? Did his kisses taste like jelly doughnuts? How do I carry on each day with the knowledge of the terrible things people are capable of? How do I help my sister work through the blackness of one friend’s death and another friend’s betrayal?

All my questions fall away when I look in her eyes, blue against the black sky.

She pushes my hair back from my face. “My baby.”

“Yes. Yes, Mom.” I can’t stop saying it. “Mom.”

The rain begins to fall, and each drop that slides down my mother’s cheeks takes away a tiny bit of her. She hugs me one last time, and then the rain picks up and takes her away entirely. The rain takes away everything.

I am crying when I awake in Mattie’s room. How unfair is this, to be given a mother for a few seconds in a dream, only to have her be taken away the moment I open my eyes. The pillow is wet with tears.

The alarm clock says it’s a little past ten. I need to get up, do something that will keep me alert. I slither out of Mattie’s bed and tiptoe to the hallway, leaving her door just slightly ajar.

In my room, I snap on the light, and brightness blinds me. A face captures my attention in the corner of the room, but when I look, I realize it’s only the face of the angel on the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt. I’d hung the shirt over the back of my rocking chair and forgotten it. Something about the angel’s eyes, the expression on her face. It reminds me of my mother.

Drawn to the shirt, I thread my arms through the sleeves and pull it over my head. It’s softer than it looks, but its caress on my skin is a poor substitute for my dream mother’s embrace.

After popping a few caffeine pills, I retrieve the astronomy book from my nightstand. I flip it open to a random page and start reading about the big bang theory. After only a paragraph, the words start to swerve on the page.

Dizziness. A slight pain behind my eyes.

I’m going to slide.

And then I realize I’m wearing the shirt that Rollins gave me.

An entire field pops up around me—not a natural field, but a man-made field, complete with white paint marking the perimeters for playing football. I see the dark but unmistakable outline of the school. Beyond it, the black sky sings with stars.

Rollins crosses the field, heading in the direction of a goalpost. It is strange to be inside him. The way his body moves, his kind of slouchy walk, is so familiar to me— but I’ve never experienced it from this perspective. I don’t know how I’ve avoided it in the year that I’ve known him. I used to think it was because he contained his feelings so well. He never left an emotional imprint on anything.

Except the T-shirt he gave me. How strange.

As he approaches the goalpost, I see the silhouette of someone waiting for him—a female silhouette. I’m surprised by a sudden pang of jealousy. I didn’t know he was seeing anyone. Have we drifted so far apart that I wouldn’t know these things?

The girl’s hair shines in the dim light coming from the faraway streetlamp. I only know one girl with that exact chocolate brown. It is Amber. Amber Prescott.

Confusion overwhelms me. Though Amber has never made her attraction to Rollins a secret, he always brushes her off. What is going on here?

When he’s about five yards away, I hear him say, “Thanks for coming.”

Amber smiles and reaches into the black-and-white Prada purse that’s slung over her shoulder. She pulls out a crumply packet, but it’s too dark for me to tell what it is.

“I’m glad you called. I was feeling a little lonely.”

Rollins opens his mouth to respond, but I’m snatched away before I can hear what he says. I jolt upright and gasp for air. I pull off the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt and chuck it on the floor.

My phone wakes me before dawn. I sit up, feeling blindly for it. I must have fallen asleep in the early morning hours, despite the handful of caffeine pills I gulped down after witnessing Rollins’s meeting with Amber.