The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,150

his long face. Oscar blew out a long, shaky breath. “Damn it, Vanny. I’m sorry, okay? You caught me off guard and I forgot…”

I didn’t like where this was going. We never apologized to each other. If anything, Oscar and I had always understood what we needed to do to survive. He’d given me his blessing to go to school far away from him, and I never gave him shit for going weeks between contacting me.

But I had this terrible feeling…

“Susie is here. At least, she said she was going to be here.”

Motherfucker. Motherfucking fucker. My teeth clenched down, one row aligned on top of the other, and I had to will my face from reacting. It took nearly everything in me to play off the anger filling me up. Of all the times to come see Oscar, Susie had to come now? Since when had she given a shit about him? While they’d always been nicer to him than they’d been to me, none of my sisters had ever really paid that much attention to him.

“I came to see you. It’s fine,” I lied. It wasn’t fine. I didn’t want to see my sister, and I didn’t want him to feel bad either. As if I wasn’t about three seconds away from screaming, I asked, “Are you heading back to Shreveport now?”

He nodded, the discomfort brutally apparent on his face. I guess he did know me well enough to not be fooled. “Yeah.” Oscar stopped talking, his eyes going pained in a way that said ‘I’m so sorry’ and raised his hand up to wave at someone behind me. “Vanny, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I knew you were coming, I would have told her…”

Not to come? I could be a better person for Oscar. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to make you choose between us.” That had him making a croaking noise that I waved off. “Don’t be dumb. Give me a hug.”

The clean, young lines of his face twisted and strained, but he nodded and quickly wrapped his arms around me. He whispered into my ear, “We have a game against San Antonio in a couple weeks. Come please. Both of you.”

I pulled back and nodded a little more tightly than I would have liked. I really didn’t want to make him feel bad, but just knowing Susie was in my general vicinity made me go to ten. Having Susie around when I’d driven an hour to come see Oscar pissed me off that much more. “I will. I’m not sure about the Hulk here with his schedule, but I’ll go.” I smiled at him. “I’ll see you soon then. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Vanny.” Teeth locked, he glanced at Aiden and extended his hand again. “It was nice meeting you. Good luck the rest of your season.”

The big guy nodded and shook his hand. “Thanks. You too.”

I sensed the evil almost immediately. I spotted my sister and her idiot husband within seconds of turning around. It was like my body was tuned in to know where she was at; it always had been. It was a protective instinct, it had to be.

Apparently, she found me in the crowd immediately too. She was glowering, her mouth twisting as her gaze bounced from me to Aiden and back again. Almost four inches shorter than me and only two years older, Susie looked so much older than her actual age, but that was the consequences of drugs, heavy drinking, and just being a miserable bitch in general. Unhappiness prematurely aged a person, my foster mom had told me once. She was right.

But I still couldn’t summon up any sympathy for my older sister. I believed in choices. We’d grown up in the same environment, went to the same schools, and had about the same intelligence, I figured. She’d always been a ruthless, angry, mean person, but at thirteen, she’d started doing stupid crap that led to more stupid crap and more stupid crap and more stupid crap until she was buried under so much crap, she could never find her way out of it.

You couldn’t expect anyone to take care of you better than you could take care of you.

Summoning up every inch of adult in me, I told myself not to be petty. I wouldn’t be petty no matter how much I wanted to. So I forced out a “Hi, Susie. Hi, Ricky,” at both her and her crackhead significant other, the same one who