the restaurant she took off for her friend Gillian’s house and spent the night there instead. She wouldn’t answer any of my texts and avoided me at school.
Which was kind of a relief, except for the part where it’s only postponing the inevitable.
“Huh. I always thought it was the other way around.” Owen drops the flash card onto the counter and blows a raspberry. “That’s embarrassing.”
I resist the urge to ruffle his hair. He’s not a little kid anymore, although he still acts like one. Sometimes I feel like Owen froze in time after Dad died, perpetually nine years old no matter how much taller he gets. Owen is smarter than either Emma or me—he tests at near-genius levels, and he keeps our old laptop running and synced with everyone’s phones in ways that mystify the rest of us. But he’s so emotionally young that Mom has never had him skip a grade, even though he could easily do the work.
Before I can reply a key turns in our front door lock, and my heart starts to pound. It’s too early for Mom to be home, which means Emma is finally making her appearance.
My sister comes through the door with her backpack slung over one shoulder and a duffel bag on the other. She’s dressed in a pale-blue oxford shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back with a navy headband. Her lips are thin and chapped. She stops short when she sees me and lets both bags drop to the ground.
“Hey,” I say. My voice comes out like a squeak, then disappears.
“Hi, Emma!” Owen says cheerfully. “You won’t believe how bad I just messed up a spelling word.” He waits expectantly, but when all she can manage is a strained smile, he adds, “You know the word bizarre? Like when something is really strange?”
“I do,” Emma says, her eyes on me.
“I spelled it B-A-Z-A-A-R. Like the shopping place.”
“Oh well, that’s understandable,” Emma says. She looks like she’s making a massive effort to speak normally. “Are you going to try again?”
“Nah, I got it now,” Owen says, sliding off his stool. “I’m gonna play Bounty Wars for a while.” Neither Emma nor I reply as he shuffles down the hallway to his bedroom. As soon as the door closes with a soft click, Emma folds her arms and turns to me.
“Why?” she asks quietly.
My mouth is desert-dry. I grab for the half-full glass of warm Fanta that Owen left on the counter and drink the whole thing down before answering. “I’m sorry.”
Emma’s face tightens, and I can see her throat move when she swallows. “That’s not a reason.”
“I know. But I am. Sorry, I mean. I never meant…it’s just, there was this party at Jules’s house the night before Christmas Eve, and Derek—” She flinches when I say the name, but I keep going. “Um, it turns out that he knows Jules’s cousin. They went to band camp together. They both play saxophone.” I’m babbling now, and Emma just stares at me with an increasingly pinched expression. “I went to the party to hang out with Jules, and he was…there.”
“He was there,” Emma repeats in a dull monotone. “So that’s your reason? Proximity?”
I open my mouth, then close it. I don’t have a good answer. Not for her, and not for myself. I’ve been trying to figure it out for almost two months.
Because I was drunk. Sure, but that’s just an excuse. Alcohol doesn’t make me do stuff I wouldn’t otherwise do. It just gives me a push to do things I would’ve done anyway.
Because you were broken up. Yeah, for three whole weeks. Emma met Derek at Model UN over the summer, and they dated for five months before he ended things. I don’t know why. She never told me, just like she never talked about their dates. But I saw firsthand, in our uncomfortably close quarters, how much time she always spent getting ready. They might eventually have gotten back together if Derek and I hadn’t smashed that possibility to bits.
Because I liked him. Ugh. That’s the cherry on top of my bad-decision sundae. I didn’t even, much.
Because I wanted to hurt you. Not consciously, but…sometimes I wonder if I’m edging toward an uncomfortable truth with this one. I’ve been trying to get Emma’s attention ever since Dad died, but most of the time she just looks right through me. Maybe some twisted corner of my brain wanted to force her to notice me. In which