The Chicken Sisters - K.J. Dell'Antonia Page 0,104

look too clean to be doing any real work.”

Mae did look clean. Clean and cute, with her dark braids and her red-striped T-shirt and her freckles. And she wasn’t moving. Amanda shifted her weight and tried to kick her sister in the shins. “Come on, get out of my way.”

“Why don’t you get out of everybody’s way? Put the stupid boxes down and just go? You’re just”—she glanced at the camera that had inevitably appeared when Mae did—“screwing everything up. I had Mom feeling fine about this and you just about destroyed her, just now, with whatever you said about growing up here. She’s off crying, and I don’t know how to fix that, but having you here isn’t going to help. So you should go.”

Amanda had cooled off a little since snapping at the camera, but Mae’s words lit her right back up again. Mae felt the same way, and she knew it. It wouldn’t hurt Barbara to hear the truth about what it had been like to be them as kids. It wouldn’t hurt anybody to hear a little truth.

“I wouldn’t be here if Nancy hadn’t told me to come—and you wouldn’t be here, either, if you could help it. You hate this place as much as I do. More, even. You never stop running away from it. It’s all you ever do—run from this mess. Mom might as well know it.”

“But I don’t hate her, and apparently you do. I don’t know what you said, but you crushed her, and that’s the last thing she needs.” Again, Mae glanced at the camera, and this time she lowered her voice and hissed in Amanda’s ear, grabbing her arm. “Can you not see that she’s sick? And she doesn’t want anyone to know?”

Amanda shook Mae off. This was total typical-Mae bullshit, designed to shut Amanda up and get her to do what Mae wanted, and Amanda wasn’t buying it. “Anyone can see she’s sick!” Amanda dumped the boxes, as close to Mae’s feet as she could, making her sister jump back, and waved her arm around the living room. “She’s obviously sick! And she’s always been sick and she’ll always be sick and cleaning out this shit won’t change her. She’ll just make it even worse, and you’ll go back to Brooklyn, and eventually she’ll die in her filth, and I’ll be the one to find her, because I’m here and you’re not. You’re the one who should go, Mae, because you’re just doing this for the cameras. Why don’t you take off your clothes next? You’re good at that. Just strip for the camera and keep everybody’s eyes on you, where you want them.”

Mae stepped over the boxes and shouted in Amanda’s face. “Well, apparently you’d sleep with anybody just to win this thing. And you’re wrong, Amanda. About everything. I’m here, and I’m staying, because somebody has to really be here, and you’re about as useless as a two-legged stool. So you get out.” She grabbed Amanda and pushed her out onto the porch. “Just go draw your stupid chickens and let me do the real work.”

Amanda caught her balance just as she came down the first step and yelled back into the doorway at her sister. “You don’t work, Mae. You just tell everybody else to work, and you’re about as likely to stay here as I am to fly. The minute there’s nothing in it for you, you’ll be out of here so fast we’ll see dust.”

“Oh, I’m not lying. And at least I don’t have to cheat and steal recipes and throw myself at every man in sight trying to win a game I don’t even understand.” Mae stepped out onto the porch and lowered her voice to a hiss. “And Mom is really sick. I don’t mean the house. But clearly you don’t give a shit, and that’s fine. I can take care of Mom. I don’t need you, I don’t want you, and she doesn’t either.”

There were more cameras on the porch, Amanda suddenly saw, and Sabrina, too. And—

“Mom?” Gus, standing next to Frankie, was calling to her from the yard. Nancy was hurrying toward her, too, coming up the stairs to the porch.

“Amanda,” Nancy yelled, “Amanda, stop this right now. Just stop.” When Nancy reached her, panting a little, she grabbed Amanda’s arm. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Amanda pulled her arm away. She was embarrassing herself? What about Mae? And what did Mae mean, about Barbara being sick? Barbara was fine; she was