Authors: Stacey Kade
He exhales with another of those bright, real smiles.
As I start to turn for my room, he says quietly, “It’s none of my business, Amanda, but I think she”—he tips his head toward my door and Mia waiting beyond—“is maybe having a hard time.”
My mouth turns down. “Yeah, I know.” Guilt pulls at me like weights wrapped around my ankles.
“Not your fault,” he reminds me.
Technically, that’s true, but if I’m the proximate cause, doesn’t that basically amount to the same thing? I’m afraid it does.
“I’ll see you soon,” I say instead, and close the door after me.
* * *
In my room, I find Mia lounging upside down on my bed, channel surfing, her long red hair just inches from brushing the floor, and her ankles crossed on one of my pillows.
I don’t know what to say to her. Uneasiness flares in my gut. The wrong thing might send her running in the wrong direction.
She grins at me. “You like him.”
I sigh. “Not up for discussion,” I say. “And get your shoes off my bed, please.” She’s lucky I’m not a germ freak like Liza. Liza would be stripping the bed already.
“Guess you don’t like him that much if this is still where you’re sleeping,” she says. “Poor Chase.” She pulls an exaggerated sad face, which, upside down as she is, is extra comical.
But I hold firm. That is, and always has been, the only tack to take with Mia if you want any kind of a serious conversation.
With an exasperated sigh, she rights herself into a sitting position, swiveling to put her feet on the floor. “Oh, come on. He’s obviously into you. I’m just having some fun.”
Now that it’s just the two of us—her audience cut in half and limited to someone used to her tactics—she’s calmer. An eight on a scale of ten instead of twenty.
“What’s really going on, Mia?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest. “Why are you here?”
Her expression grows wary, her lower lip jutting out mutinously. “You know. Mom and Dad—”
“Oh, please, like they would have dropped you off and missed the chance to yell at me some more.”
The way she avoids my eyes tells me that my belated deduction is on target.
“That’s true. Everything is definitely still all about you,” she says under her breath, kicking her boots against the short carpeting.
Her words strike with the accuracy of a whip, and I wince. “Meez, I’m sorry—”
“I thought it would be better, you know? With you … here.” The word “gone” hangs in the air between us, a mid-thought correction. “But it wasn’t.” Her frown shows lines on either side of her mouth that have no business forming on someone her age. She shouldn’t be under that kind of stress. And yet I know she is.
“What happened?” I ask.
Mia looks up at me sharply. “You mean after Dad freaked out because you sent the cops away?”
“I’m here because I want to be,” I say evenly. “And I’m an adult—”
“Or how about when your picture, looking half terrified and ready to faint, shows up on every local news station,
Access Hollywood
and
Entertainment Tonight
, and all those other shows?” She cocks her head at me. “Mom
loved
that.”
The image of my mother watching TV, her hand clamped to her mouth to keep from crying, immediately springs to mind. “I’m fine. I’m doing what I need to do, what’s right for me,” I say, feeling like the lowest form of life on the planet. Who is this selfish? Me—that’s who.
“I know that, Amanda!” Mia shouts. “But someone needs to convince them. Get it? They can’t see anyone else or anything else except saving you, even if you don’t need it.” She flops back on my bed with a sullen expression and stares at the ceiling.
Dread fills me. “They don’t know you’re here, do they?” I ask, sitting on the other bed.
“They were talking about it last night, what to do,” she says without looking at me.
“After the phone call,” I say, more a statement than question.
She nods, rolling her eyes.
“Liza said that if you wouldn’t come home, they should bring me here. Because maybe that would convince you.” Her tone is angry and bitter, but worse than that, I can hear the wobble of impending tears in her voice. And unlike most Mia-weeping situations, where she’s a one-woman opera of despair, she appears to be trying hard
not
to cry. Which only makes me feel worse.
Convince me?
More like emotionally blackmail me into doing what they want. I might be willing to take risks with myself but not with her and they know that. And how shitty for Mia to hear her family—our family—talking about her that way, like she’s a chess piece to be moved to achieve another objective.
My emotional meter swings wildly between rage and guilt, the one burning through me with the fire of a thousand suns, the other threatening to pull me down until I can’t breathe beneath its weight.
“So I just brought myself to save them the trouble,” she says with a bright, false smile at the ceiling.
“If Liza thinks it’s such a great idea, then why didn’t she come herself?” I snap.
Mia pops her head up, bracing herself on her elbows, and gives me an incredulous look. “You’re kidding, right?”
I wave my hand in dismissal. “Law school, classes, incredibly difficult, yeah, yeah.” I’ve heard it plenty already from Liza herself, who seems to need everyone else to acknowledge the difficulty before she can unclench even a little.
Mia snorts. “No, because then she’d have to talk to you.”
I stop, my mouth hanging open. This is the first time anyone has ever acknowledged the tension aloud. I knew it wasn’t my imagination, but the way Mia is talking, it’s something the rest of my family has discussed.
“I thought you would have figured it out by now,” Mia says, flicking her fingers against the bedspread, removing crumbs that she was responsible for putting there in the first place.
“Someone would have to talk to me,” I point out. “And since Dad and Liza avoid me, and Mom is pretending everything is awesome, that leaves you.”
She seems momentarily nonplussed. “Oh, right.” Then she shakes her head. “Okay, well … it’s just a few years ago, Liza was being Liza…” She hesitates. “You know how she is, all logic and next steps. Emotion chip deactivated or whatever.”
I nod.
“And I guess she was doing some research.” Mia pokes at the comforter again instead of looking at me. “And she found out that you can’t declare someone dead for, like, a bunch of years, I guess.”
Suddenly I have a terrible feeling I know where this is going.
“So, that summer, right before you were found, Liza was pushing for a memorial service for you. For ‘closure.’” Mia lifts her hands to make air quotes, but her shoulders are sagging, as if bent under the burden of holding and then sharing this knowledge. “She was leaning hard on Mom and Dad to make it happen. Then the police called, saying they found you.”
The words hit harder than I expected. When I was in the basement, I knew that my family probably thought I was dead. I was gone for so long. But all anyone ever said when I came back was how they’d never given up hope.
Hearing now that that might not have truly been the case makes me feel like I clawed my way to freedom only to find everyone completely uninterested in my return.
Which is obviously not true. But it’s a flash-burn of betrayal that’s hard to ignore.
“It’s not her fault,” Mia says with obvious reluctance. “Mom and Dad were messed up, like really messed up. I think she was trying to help in her Liza way.”
She’s right. Liza would break the situation down rationally. The best solution would be for me to come home. If that couldn’t happen, then the next best would be to move on as neatly and cleanly as possible, which would require some kind of resolution or closure. And a memorial service would be the only kind of resolution or closure that could be controlled.
It just sucks as the one who was intended to be memorialized while I was still alive.
“When you came home, Liza pretended she never even brought it up, and Mom and Dad told me not to say anything to you because of your ‘mental state.’” Mia makes a face.
So, instead, my older sister either ignores me or speaks to me without quite meeting my gaze. Liza might lean toward logic, but she’s not a freaking robot. In her mind, she wrote me off as dead and then she turned out to be wrong. That must really be messing with her mind. Liza doesn’t handle being wrong very well at all, even on little stuff. And this time, it’s probably not just being wrong, but the guilt of it, too.
No wonder we’re so messed up.
I sigh and drop my head in my hands, attempting to alleviate the tension growing in my neck muscles and the gnawing feeling of hurt in my chest.
Then I straighten up and focus on Mia. “Okay, putting that aside for now”—because what else was I supposed to do with that information right now?—“coming here without telling Mom and Dad is cruel, Mia. They’ve already had one missing kid; they’re going to be—”
“They’d have to notice I was gone first, Amma,” she says wearily.
She holds up her phone. No texts, no screen full of missed calls.
My shoulders sag. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if there is a fix for it. But I hate seeing her hurt. “What can I do to help?” I ask.
She scoots forward to the edge of the bed. “Let me stay here with you until you come home.”
I gape at her.
“It’s just another day or two, right?”
The reminder sends a pang through me.
“You make me crazy, but at least you notice me. At least I exist to you,” she says bitterly.
“Mia…” I begin, shaking my head.
“I won’t get in the way,” she says, and my heart breaks, remembering her as a little kid following Liza and me around.
“It’s not that,” I say.
She scowls. “You just don’t want me crashing your little lovefest.” She flings her hand toward Chase’s room. “But I told you, I don’t care. Go for it.”
Hmmm. Should I be questioning the wisdom of decisions that my wild-as-hell younger sister endorses? Possibly.
“No,” I say. “Listen to me. First, hanging out here isn’t going to fix anything at home. You’ll have to go back eventually. We both will. I’m hoping to have a better grip on some of the stuff that’s bothering me by the time I leave. What’s your plan?”
She doesn’t answer, studying her nails instead.
“Second, things are complicated here. There’s a lot of attention on us and some of it’s not good. I don’t want you caught up in that.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Are you in trouble?”
“No.” I pause. “Not yet. Maybe. I don’t know. There might have been some threats. Chase is checking into it. But there are always threats, remember?”
“Yeah, but—”
“My choice, not yours,” I say firmly, leaving no room for argument. Liza’s the lawyer, but Mia’s persistence is almost as wearing. “And I don’t want you here in the middle of that. Plus, you’ve got school.”
Mia snorts. “Please. Who cares?”
“
You
might, if you miss enough that you’re sitting next to me this summer at the kitchen table, doing homework for Mom.” A day or two wouldn’t do that, but I’m guessing, with Sammy’s influence, she might have been “liberating” herself rather frequently.
“Gross.” She wrinkles her nose.
“Exactly.” I hesitate, then add, “But you can stay here for today. And if they’ll let you in, I’ll take you with me to the set.” Hopefully Chase won’t mind.
She straightens up as if she’s been electrified. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, but you have to promise you’ll be quiet and stay right next to me. This is a big deal, and Chase can’t afford trouble from us.”
She throws her hand up, palm out. “I swear.”
“And then you have to go home
and
go to school tomorrow.”
Mia heaves a sigh. “Fine.” She stands up, practically vibrating with excitement. “Can we go now?” Then she holds up her hands. “Wait. I need to shower and change my clothes.” She has the air of someone who expects to be swept off in a private jet to a studio somewhere.
“You can borrow something from me,” I offer.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m trying to make a good impression, Amma, not convince them to give me their spare change.”
I raise my middle finger at her, and she laughs.
She heads for the bathroom, pausing halfway to look back at me. “You’re going to call them, aren’t you?”
Mom and Dad, she means.
“Yeah. I have to let them know you’re here.” I’m tempted to text, but since a little information might only alarm them further—I really don’t want another visit from the well-intentioned Wescott police—it’s probably better to bite the bullet.
But I’m going to do my best to control the conversation.
As if reading my thoughts, Mia shakes her head and continues toward the bathroom. “Good luck with that,” she says over her shoulder.
“Thanks.” I chuck a pillow after her, missing her by several feet.
She laughs as she disappears into the bathroom. “Wow, you suck.”
“Hey, Meez?”
“Yeah?” She sticks her head out the door.
“No matter what, when I get home, it’s going to be different. I’ll talk to Mom. It’s going to be better.”
Mia nods, her gaze not quite meeting mine.
“You believe me?” I persist.
She hesitates. “I think you’re going to try, and that’s better than it was.”
Not exactly the rousing vote of confidence I was hoping for, but probably what the situation deserves. I wish I could give her more guarantees. I wish we could all have them. But that’s apparently not how life works. Stupid life.
I wait until I hear the shower running—and Mia singing something from a musical—before I pick up my phone.
Ignoring all the texts, voicemails, and missed calls, I pull up my phone book and tap the number for my parents’ house.
It rings once before someone picks up.
“Amanda?” It’s Liza, not bothering with a greeting.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I say.
“I’ll get Mom,” she says.
“Wait.” The word pops out before I know what I’m going to say next, so there’s a weird, awkward silence for a long second. “Mia told me,” I blurt.