The Truth About Fragile Things (15 page)

“Phillip?” I asked, looking for help. “You’re an Eagle Scout. That’s the only reason you know any of this granola stuff. You’re not allowed to lie to your mother, are you?”

He shook his head, his grin warning me not to look for any support from him. “I’m not lying. I’m telling my parents I’m going backpacking on Tom Sauk Mountain to see a meteor shower.”

“And you’re telling them you’ll have two girls with you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think it will come up.”

I groaned. I flipped through several options involving sleeping over at Alicia’s to pretend academic trips to a crazy one that required Schatz to know and cover for me. I threw them all away before they fermented in my head for more three seconds. “There is nothing I can say to my parents to make this work. Literally nothing.” I gave Phillip and Charlotte a stony stare, daring them to solve the dilemma. “Anyone? Anyone?”

Phillip handed me his half-eaten slice in reconciliation. “You are going to have to act your butt off.”

“You’re going without a tent?” Lauren nibbled off the edge of her potato chip. “You are just putting some beef jerky in a backpack and sleeping on the ground without a tent? With Phillip?”

It sounded worse the longer she talked. “We’ll have sleeping bags. Won’t we?” I pulled out my copy of Bryon’s list, pouring over it like a constitution. “It doesn’t say anything about no sleeping bags.”

“What if something crawls into it?” Lauren’s face shone with a disturbing joy. “What if it rains? What if it’s thirty degrees outside? Or what if it is cold and raining and
therefore
something crawls in with you to keep warm?”

“This really couldn’t get any better for you, could it?”

“I can’t imagine how.” The crunch of the chips between her teeth sounded like laughter.

“You are a terrible, horrible, inexcusable sister. And you are going to make up for it by helping me with Mom and Dad.”

“Sure,” she agreed too brightly. I arched my eyebrow suspiciously and she continued. “Just take me with you. We can convince them we’re going to have a fun sisters’ weekend. We’ll even tell them we want to try camping. If we do it together we can pull it off.”

I brushed the wispy baby hairs off my forehead and calibrated my voice to make sure I kept her on my side. “That’s a good idea. And you know I’d love to have you laughing at me the entire time, but this is one of those weird things I have to do alone. I’d be self-conscious if you were there.”

She argued, throwing in a couple threats and an extra guilt, but I held firm. “Lauren, if you’re there I’ll be thinking of you. I’ll be worried about you getting hurt. I’ll be worried what you think of me when I try to be…outdoorsy.”

“You are going to try to be outdoorsy?” She nailed me with disbelieving eyes.

“I actually am. I’m going to be all…natural and…wild.”

“Wild?” The word fell to the floor, bounced to a halt when it hit my leather shoes.

“See? You’re making me feel stupid already. I have to do this alone. But I need your help. Please.”

“Has Phillip ever kissed you?” she whipped the question out, hoping to catch me off balance.

“Only in his very disgusting dreams,” I promised without hesitation. “This trip has nothing to do with him.”

“Fine,” she growled reluctantly. “What’s the story?”

Phillip told me to act my butt off, but Lauren took home the Oscar. As we picked our way through cranberry pecan salad at dinner her hand came down on the dinner table with a small slam, making us all turn.

“I totally forgot. Mom, we get extra credit in my science class if we take a trip to the Omaha zoo to see the new bug display. And I have an 89%. It would put me back up to an A.” She pulled a lettuce leaf off her fork with her teeth and opened her big eyes in a silent plea. “And we have a Friday off school in two weeks and I thought we could all go.”

My father chewed thoughtfully, but didn’t look like he was seriously considering it. “When did it drop to a B?” he wondered, but Lauren ignored him.

“And I can’t register for the honor’s field trip to St. Louis this summer if I don’t have all “A’s,” Lauren pushed. “Please. It’ll be fun. Please.”

I tried to look supportive and noncommittal at the same time, while concealing my admiration for her natural ability to pull off a complete lie. I chewed on a cranberry and wondered if my blue sweater had really gotten a hole from the washer.

“That might work,” my mom said. “It’d be nice to take a weekend off. We could do the river walk, Megan.”

 I smiled sadly, thinking of what I’d miss. If you take a square of cardboard downtown you can stop at the massive, metal ramps and ride down the slides. It is just far enough away from home I can let loose. And there is always the nostalgia. We did those slides every year when I was little. Now that we’re older we follow it up with a dinner downtown at a French restaurant where we eat things like duck and rabbit and raw meat just to prove who’s bravest.

“I would love to, but Schatz called a special rehearsal all day that Friday. We’re not really where we should be.”

“Skip it,” Lauren said, her clear eyes still and unreadable.

I gazed back at her, hoping she got my clue to quit while we were ahead. “Wish I could, but I can’t. I have to help Charlotte with her blocking. But you three should go. I can hold down the fort. I could even spend the night with Alicia and do something fun.”

“How is Charlotte doing?” My mom asked, setting down her fork as her expression clouded. “Are you two working well together?”

“She’s fine. I think she’s getting used to me.”

My mother muttered something so low I caught only the mood, but not the words. She still struggled with the fact the past had slipped back into our lives.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” Dad said. “Could we go this weekend?”

“No!” Lauren yelled, dropping her calm façade. My parents looked to her, waiting for an explanation. Her eyes spun around the table, blank.

“That boy?” I teased. “You already agreed to help him with his homework, right?”

She lowered her eyelashes in embarrassment. “You promised you wouldn’t tell.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Mom, Dad, if you twist my arm and threatened me with poisoned frogs I will not tell you who we are talking about. So don’t ask.” I patted Lauren’s hand in a mock apology and returned the subject to the real problem. “Seriously, take her on the 10th. She’s been wanting some time alone with both of you anyway. I will be fine. It will be nice to have the house to myself.”

“You’ve been wanting some time alone with us?” Mom’s voice melted into the soft pitches she uses for anything emotional. “I didn’t know that.”

Lauren shrugged in a beautiful imitation of adolescent embarrassment. “It might be nice.”

My father exchanged a look with my mother and I knew we were golden.

Lauren was going to eat out three times a day and see the meanest gorilla in captivity and I was going to try to keep dangerous creatures out of our sleeping bags. Phillip being one of them. The gorilla sounded better with every passing minute.

P
hillip wanted
to know how I managed my parents, but for revenge I refused to tell him and concentrated on one thing at school—the play. It was trickier than usual, putting myself aside and diving into the character. During our first stage rehearsal a foreign sensation seeped under my skin, hiding behind the usual thrum of nerves and excitement. It was something more than the exhilaration of letting go. It was something new I couldn’t label until I saw Charlotte’s upturned face track me across the stage. I pulled out of my head and borrowed her eyes. I saw the lights fold over my shoulders like a cape. They always make someone look something like a hero. I carried with me not just the burden of my part, but the impossible weight of her constant assessment.

Every practice I saw Charlotte attempting, and increasingly failing, to be blasé toward me. It’s hard to do in an auditorium. I’ve tried it as an experiment; I pictured the homeliest, most annoying kids I know alone on a quiet stage, the spotlight shattering off their nervous faces. And each and every one transformed into someone poignant, meaningful, powerful. That is why they call the stage magic. It turns us into something more. What I couldn’t tell was if it made me more likeable or more contemptible.