Bewitching (12 page)

“You know, I have it on my iPod. Maybe you could listen to it.”

“Really? That would be so cool. You’re so sweet.”

“Of course you can borrow it.” You just couldn’t
not
be nice to Lisette.

That afternoon, Thursday, I had to study for a German test, so Lisette and I didn’t do homework together. But when I finished, I went to my nightstand drawer to get her my iPod. It wasn’t there.

I went down to her room. She was sitting on the bed, texting.

“Hey, you didn’t take my iPod to listen to that song, did you?”

Lisette adjusted her position on the pillows. “Of course not.”

“I just, you know, couldn’t find it.” Now I felt like I needed to explain that I wasn’t accusing her of stealing or anything. I just wanted to let her know why I didn’t have the iPod, even though I promised it to her. That was all. “So I thought maybe, since I said you could borrow it, you might just have taken it. I mean, gotten it.”

She looked up now, staring at me with her cool blue eyes. “I said no.”

I nodded. “Okay, I guess I must have left it lying around somewhere.” I looked down, but I could still feel her staring at me. I wanted to change the subject, make everything okay. “So, do you want to do the algebra assignment?”

“Finished it.”

“Language arts?”

“Finished that too.”

Language arts had been twenty-seven sentences with the vocabulary words. No way could she have finished all of them. Not without time traveling.

“Look, I’m busy,” she said.

“You’re texting.”

“I’m texting my friends from home.”

I nodded, still not wanting to leave. Why had she turned on me so quickly? “So, we’ll do it later?”

“I already told you I was finished.”

Finally, I had to leave.

Back in my room, I went through every drawer, every closet, rummaged under the bed. The iPod was nowhere to be found.

8

Friday night, I went to the mall with “the girls,” and Saturday to a different mall. Saturday night, they all came over to watch movies, while Mother hovered over us, offering popcorn and fresh-squeezed lemonade.

It was fun being part of the group, but I could barely understand a word they said. I hoped Mother couldn’t understand at all.

“Wagwan, Midori,” Courtney said, looking at her phone. “I see you friended Jacy Davis. She’s a total skank.”

“I did it for the lulz,” Midori said. “Did you see the stuff she posts? Last week, she took selfies of her getting blazed at Crispin’s party.”

“I know!” Courtney said. “And she’s literally hooked up with a thousand guys.”

Mother, who had been handing out Rice Krispies squares, now tried to look invisible. She’d seen every episode of Dr. Phil and read Dear Abby daily. Plus, she’d been forwarded a million cautionary emails by her friends, outlining the evils of posting photos on the internet, much less getting high.
Please don’t let her say anything
. I tried to telepath to her:
Don’t speak. After all, you want me to be friends with these girls
.

She must have heard me, because she kept her mouth shut.

The weird thing was, after two solid days with Courtney and Company, I was starting to… I don’t know, long to go upstairs and read a book. Yes, I’d been friends with Courtney in the past, but now I realized we’d grown apart. We were nothing alike. In fact, she was kind of annoying. It was Lisette I wanted to be with now. I admitted to myself that I’d had this fantasy that she wouldn’t need any friends besides me. Then we’d read by the fireplace while toasting s’mores every Saturday night until it was time to be college roommates, then marry identical twins. Okay, probably not.

So when Midori said, “We should make this a sleepover party,” I said, “Oh, no.”

“No?” Midori obviously wasn’t used to the word.

I looked at Lisette. “We have plans tomorrow morning, early. Right, Lisette?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, right?”

“Remember? Dad’s boat? We told him we’d go.” Dad had already turned in, but Lisette had said she was up for it.

“Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “Some other time then.”

They left a little while later. Before I went to bed, I asked Lisette, “What time are we going?”

“Oh, I told Dad since we were going to be up late, maybe nine.”

It was after one, but I said, “Great. I’ll set my alarm for eight.”

The next morning, my alarm didn’t ring. When I woke up at eight-thirty, Lisette was already gone. I didn’t have to ask to know where she was—out with Daddy on his sailboat.

Why? Had she misunderstood that I’d wanted to go? Or had Daddy not wanted me? It must have been some kind of misunderstanding. They couldn’t have just ditched me.

I tried to tell myself I hadn’t really wanted to go. It was true. I’d much rather spend the day at home with a good book than fighting sails and frying my skin. I just didn’t want Lisette to go, didn’t want to be left out.

But that was selfish, right? I’d had Dad my whole life. Lisette was just getting to know him.

When Mother came down an hour later, I was eating a muffin and reading. She said, “I thought you were going with them.”

I shrugged. “I don’t really like sailing.” It wasn’t a lie.

“You should have gone. Don’t let her worm her way into your spot.”

“She’s not doing that.” I turned a page of my book, even though I wasn’t finished with it.

“Emma, pay attention. That’s just what she’s doing. She’s a pretty girl, and she knows how to get what she wants, whether it’s clothes or your father.”

“That’s not fair.” She made me sound so pathetic, so helpless, like there was no way my father could possibly care about me, as a person.

“Watch out for her, Emma.”

I looked at the book, but said, “You make it sound like she’s some evil viper or something.”

“I don’t know how she was raised.”

“You’re the one who stole Dad from her mother, not the other way around.”

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. What was I thinking? Me, who’d rather get kicked a hundred times than tell someone to take their foot off my chair, who ate PB&J every day for three years rather than tell my mother I didn’t like it. I was making soap opera revelations now? Mom stood frozen, and I tried to shove the words back. “Look, I’m sorry.”

“Clearly, that’s what you think of me.”

“It’s not.”

She turned to leave. “Clear the dishes when you’ve finished.”

I knew I should go after her, say I hadn’t meant it, that I wouldn’t go over to the dark side with Lisette. But I had meant it. Mother was the villain in the story. Lisette was the victim. I’d never thought about it before, never had to. Now I had, and once thought about, I couldn’t unthink it. Unless I was in a car accident and got brain damage, which might be easier than thinking all the time, but which would come with its own set of problems.

Yet part of me knew that Lisette had ditched me on purpose. Mother was right. I just didn’t want to admit it, to Mother or myself.

I sat in my room all day, reading and avoiding Mother. Lisette came home with Daddy, blue eyes shining through the sunburn I knew would turn to tan, and knocked on my door.

“I tried to wake you up this morning,” she said before I asked. “But you just yelled at me to go away.”

“Really? I don’t remember that. I thought I set my alarm.”

“Huh. It’s so weird when that kind of thing happens. One time, my mom went to let our cat out in the middle of the night and got locked out. She pounded on the door until I let her in, she said, but the next morning, I didn’t remember it. Even though I got up and everything.”

“That’s weird.”

“Anyway, maybe that’s what happened.”

I nodded. “Probably.” It sounded possible. I had been up really late. I usually went to bed around ten-thirty.

“Anyway, we missed you.”

I wanted to change the subject, so I asked her if she wanted to listen to this song I liked (my iPod had miraculously reappeared under my bed, even though I’d looked there five times). She did. When Mother called us to dinner, I had Lisette tell her I wasn’t feeling well. I couldn’t face her.

I wasn’t surprised when there was a knock on my door, an hour later. I unlocked it, dreading seeing Mom. I started back toward my bed and my copy of
Sense and Sensibility
, which I was rereading for the fifth time.

“Feeling better?”

I turned, startled to hear Dad’s voice. “What?” Had he come to talk about my argument with Mother? Of course not. She’d never tell him what I’d said. “Oh, yeah. Better.” I picked up my book, which I’d dropped.

“Good book?”

“Sure.” He didn’t care. He wasn’t a big reader, except the newspaper. It was just one of those things parents do, asking you a question, just so you’ll have to talk.

“Haven’t seen much of you lately,” he said.

Maybe if you hadn’t ditched me this morning
. But I didn’t say it. I was back to being the quiet one, the nonconfrontational one. I’d had my outburst for the decade. I said, “I want to go sailing next time.”

He nodded and didn’t say anything about Lisette trying to wake me. I wondered if it was true. Instead, he said, “How’ve you and Lizzie been getting along?”

“Lizzie?” The question surprised me. Dad wasn’t usually the one who looked for trouble when there was none apparent. He left that to my mother. “Great. Fine. She’s super-nice.”

“Would you tell me if there was a problem?”

No
. “Of course. But there isn’t one.” My book closed, losing my place. Did he think there was a problem? Like, did he suspect Lisette had blown me off on purpose?

“Because Lizzie was telling me she’s worried you’re jealous of her.”

“Jealous? Why would I be jealous?”
Just because she’s skinny, blond, perfect, and my old friends love her even enough to deal with me?
“She’s really nice.”

“She said you accused her of stealing your earrings.”

“What?” I started, and the book bounced off the bed. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t say that. That’s not true. She just had the same earrings as me, the shell ones you bought on our trip, and I said…” I tried to remember what I said. Dad was nodding, the way adults do when they’re pretending to believe you, but they really don’t. “I just said we should wear them together sometimes, because we had the same ones. That’s all.”

He kept nodding.

“Don’t you believe me?” I reached for the book on the floor, even though I knew I looked stupid, fumbling for it and wouldn’t be able to find my page, mostly because I didn’t want him to see my face, how red it was.

“Of course I believe you. Just remember, this is a hard time for Lisette. Her mother has passed away. She’s in a new place, all new people. Just try to be friendly.”

“I have been friendly. I’ve been nothing but nice to her, even when…”

“Even when what?”

“Nothing. I never said she stole my earrings.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

“She must have misunderstood.”

“That’s probably it.” He touched my head.

I chose a random place in the book and started reading. “I have homework.”

“We okay?” he asked.

“Of course.”

Finally, he left. I stared at the book until the letters moved and swirled to look like they were written in Russian or Arabic. Only after Dad left did it occur to me that he hadn’t said the things parents usually say to their old kid when there’s a new kid around, stuff like how they loved the old kid just as much, how they knew it was hard for the old kid—for
me
—to adjust.

No, Dad hadn’t been concerned about my feelings at all. He’d only cared about Lisette.

Another thought occurred to me. I’d never thought Lisette had taken my earrings.

Now, I was positive she had.

I turned back to the beginning of the book and started reading.

Another hour passed, an hour in which the characters in the book stood stock-still, accomplishing nothing because I was too busy playing and replaying the conversation in my head. Unfair. So. Unfair. Someone says something about you, and just because they said it first—because you were trying to be
nice
and not complain, you’re in the position of denying it. You have—as those lawyers on TV would say—the burden of proof. And, if the person who says it is perfect and sweet-looking and blond and—let’s face it—Dad’s
real
daughter, it’s a pretty heavy burden.

My stomach growled, a long, skinny growl that spiraled from my belly to just below my heart, but I couldn’t go downstairs and get something to eat, couldn’t face Mother, now that I knew she was right. I knew I’d be up at midnight, making a sandwich. I wanted my mother, but I couldn’t go.

Someone knocked on the door.

I glanced at the clock, considering whether I could ignore it, whether I could pretend to be asleep.

Eight-thirty. Probably no one would buy it.

Another knock. Then, a voice. “Emma?”

Lisette!

“Emma, let me in!”

I sighed and said, “It’s open.” I couldn’t be rude to her, not now that she was all about reporting me to Dad.

“I brought you a sandwich.” She held it out to me.