The Deadly Sister (5 page)

C
heyenne wanted to come inside my house with me, but I knew pretending not to know where Maya was would be hard enough without Cheyenne around to complicate things. So I said good-bye and walked up the driveway alone.

Our front yard was an eternal source of neighborhood snickering. For one thing, you couldn’t see a square foot of free driveway. The garage was jammed by a pair of antique cars that my dad had been trying to get running forever—we had baby pictures of Maya bouncing on the seats, and they hadn’t moved before or since. Because the garage was filled with cars that didn’t move, all the rest of our crap was in the driveway, in full view of the rest of the neighborhood. There was my car, an old white clunker that came with a sticker in the back window of a boy peeing on a Chevy sign that I’d only half managed to scratch off, a riding mower, and my parents’ cars, a matching pair of BMWs. They each had vanity plates, M
OM’S
B
EAMER
and D
AD’S
BEAMER
. But they were nothing compared to the boat, a glittering hunk of plastic that looked like a way oversize Christmas ornament. We hadn’t gone sailing in years. We didn’t even own a truck anymore, so we couldn’t budge it. The only use it’d had in the last decade was when the neighbor’s cat gave
birth to seven kittens underneath it. But we had the boat status symbol, which cast a shadow on the house and the whole neighborhood.

If the outside of the house was pure excess, the inside was pure constraint. As I unlocked the door and pushed it open, calling out to see if my mother was home, my voice rang out down the drab (“Roman tile”) hallway and the empty (“minimalist!”) living room, through the cruel (“Bessemer steel appliances!”) kitchen. I’d never been a fan of our house—there was nothing on the walls because the plaster couldn’t be marred; our couches didn’t have cushions so that the lines were clean—but its fashionableness was a huge source of pride for my mom. She looked forward to polishing the silver every Sunday morning as much as the other moms in our subdivision anticipated facials. Who was I to complain about her getting happy, even if by the shallowest methods? Her interior design drugs were much cheaper than Maya’s chemical ones.

Luckily, my parents were out running errands when I returned from spiriting Maya away. Cody bounded to the laundry room, started slurping up water. Poor girl. I shut the dog gate. She was allowed in the laundry room or out back, but no dog hair anywhere else in the house.

One good thing about Maya choosing to live in the basement was that I got both of the upstairs bedrooms and the bathroom joining them. I closed the doors and put some music on high. Its thick, powerful twang calmed and strengthened me. I knew that I didn’t have any time to
waste. I had to spin this story the right way, and that would mean steering everyone in the correct directions right from the beginning.

I started the shower running, stripped, and stared at myself in the mirror. Still the same naked Abby, red elbows and pale freckled thighs.

The backs of my arms were already dried out from the extra-long shower I’d taken the night before, but I had to clean again. I put the water on its hottest setting, until steam was truly billowing from the bathroom. I gasped, then gave in to the distraction of the pain and pleasure.

Once I’d showered and dressed in comfortable, clean T-shirt and sweats, I turned the music up even louder and lay on my bed. I’d allow myself one sweet minute of rest.

First step, I reasoned, was to finally take a good look at what was in Maya’s basement, see if there was anything down there that might incriminate her. Should I wear gloves? No—no one would care if my fingerprints were in my own house. As I went down the stairs, I leaned on the handrails so they wouldn’t creak. I knew there was no chance of Maya barging in, but she always made such a big deal about her personal space that I was nervous, anyway.

She had placed black paper cones over the basement’s overhead lamps, so the floor was dark except where it was broken by stray shafts of light. Only the barest illumination hit the paraphernalia of Maya’s life—and everything she owned was best called paraphernalia. Remnants of cut-up
magazines, tubes of paints and makeup, curled and dusty posters of cute boys back from the days of her more knowable preteen existence, bumper stickers for bands with too many consonants in their names, a curling guitar she once found along the side of the road and took home, even though the wood was warping, the frets rimmed green with fungus. Some of the sweet sister who used to lean against me at the school bus stop remained—propped up between an eight ball and a cracked lava lamp was a crayon portrayal of an airport, done with a nine-year-old’s sense of perspective, planes crammed one on top of the next, crossing impossible dimensions as Maya tried to figure out how to make them all fit on the page. Wigs, some normal and some crazy and pink. She loved to go out looking like she wasn’t her.

No one else had come in here for months, not even my mother. Maya was all about setting up these airtight boundaries: no sunlight on her white skin; no sharing a toothpaste tube with anyone, least of all me; no talking about her feelings or what was always making her so sullen. I felt a sense of weird unholiness, like I’d entered some foreign church. I ran my fingers over the keys of an old typewriter, flipped through a graphic novel. Four of them were on Maya’s bed, on and under the velvety sheets, testaments to how long ago it’d been since she’d actually slept at home and needed to use her bed as anything but storage.

At the foot of the bed, slotted in between a selection of paperbacks and a few random volumes of
The Book of Knowledge
filched from the den upstairs—
T, PQ, A
—was a
book with a plain binding. I pulled it down and opened it with one finger.

There were drawings on the first few pages, clumsy, vivid, and energetic. The crosshatching of a black moth’s wings indented the paper ten pages farther in. Then the journaling began.

…not sure whether I don’t like them and so I don’t like being with them, or if I just don’t relate to them and so I decide I don’t like them, just so I’ll never know they never liked me, that’s a fun circle, huh?!…

…present myself fully so that no one will ask any questions…

…I doing? He’s so not my type…

…stand her. How is it possible that we were both raised by the same parents? But they’re just like her. Conformist. Middle class. Boring. I’m the one who was pushed into the nest by a cuckoo bird or something. Tried to ask her last night how she really felt about the fact that he wasn’t talking to her anymore. It’s a total teenage thing, right, to get upset about some guy not liking you back, so I expected her to say something, but she just shut down totally. Or turned it on totally is more like it. Got real chirpy. I’m like, really? Why are you smiling? This rejection’s got you thrilled? It’s not like she’s fake. It’s that she’s not fully real. Where’s the suffering? She can’t really be as happy as she lets on. But what the hell, everyone likes her and she got into Vanderbilt and
my parents probably wish they’d stopped having kids after her so maybe that’s the key after all, everyone thinks your golden or everyone thinks your shit. (me included? What do I think of me?) Huh. Tougher one is how does she feel about her?…

…totally hot. I don’t care what they think. They don’t know how I scream. And I can’t describe it, even to my best friends, without sounding like a total slut…

…he’s really sweet. I just wish I liked him more. When I touch him, it’s like his body moves more than I’d expect it to…

…like I was finally really present in the world. We dunked underwater, and it was like we could have stayed down there for an hour if we wanted. But we didn’t want to, I guess. I thought I did. When I came up my heart was thumping so hard it was like a dance beat. At the time I was sure he heard it and that that was what we danced to. But you know what, I was high, and I’m just going to have to figure out that those things I think are huge truths while youre high are just you being you and wishing others were you as well…

I flipped to the last page. It was dated a few months ago. A playlist for a mix CD, lots of crossouts and scribbling.

She thought I was fake, huh? Because what, I tried at school, because I didn’t drop out and stop talking to my family, just to end up throwing my tits at the GED tutor my parents paid good money to have come to the house
twice a week? It’s like she thought the only way to be real was never to do what was expected. I sort of got why some kids went really goth and started driving hundreds of miles to go to renaissance fairs or hardcore concerts or whatever, but Maya was like one of those pseudo-emo kids who buy black lipstick and get a belly button piercing just because she knows teachers will go tsk-tsk and her parents will freak. Pissing people off and saying you’re all unique isn’t enough. Actually becoming unique would be something. Maya made being disappointed a lifestyle. No wonder everyone found it impossible to spend time with her, even her own parents.

Really, it was no wonder Maya detested me.

Yes, she detested me. But I was the one who had her future in my hands.

I pulled back the sheets. Nothing was there, beyond a musty smell.

I dug into the room, pulling open drawers, tossing around laundry, lifting the mattress and peering underneath. I didn’t find anything but receipts and notes that would take hours to go through. I’d save that task for when I got more desperate. Unable to stop myself, I made Maya’s bed. I couldn’t stand the idea of it looking like a disaster if the police came to investigate.

As I was straightening Maya’s sheets, I swept the random encyclopedias to the floor. Shreds of paper fell out of
T.
I opened the volume and saw that Maya had gone after the inside pages with an X-Acto knife. Classic trick—book as secret storage. She seemed to have botched T, though—the
insides looked like a used piñata. I opened
PQ,
and then
A
—Aha. Inside was a plastic-wrapped bundle of something soft and brown, moist like sod. I recognized a drug, even if I had no idea which one it was. A note on top, in tight, controlled handwriting I knew to be Jefferson’s:
30 Langdell, #4D.
I memorized the address, replaced the note, and shoved the book deep under her bed. There was a rumble from the driveway.

My parents were home.

B
efore the front door had even closed, my dad called out, “Family meeting!” Almost instantly, I could hear my mom getting out the club soda, a drink she thought lent formality and which always signified something major was happening. Family meetings were the only times anyone but my father used the den, and I’d never known oak and dusty brass to be so intimidating. His den was a dark, meticulously organized place, and to me it screamed “divorce, divorce, divorce,” probably because four years ago, during our most memorable family meeting ever,
divorce
was the only word Maya and I heard.

I walked in, said, “What’s up?” and watched my mom slide ice cubes into a glass and pour me some popping water. I’m often struck by how pretty she is. She has this muscle-plump body and amazing red hair that’s so full and lovely it looks like a wig, and in that way actually does her a disservice. She wears pearls a lot, but so naturally that they look casual. She’s always focusing on other people. I’ll be happy to be like her when I’m that age.

“Where,” my dad said, “is your sister?”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking between my dad and mom and back again. “Why?”

“We’re worried,” my dad said. “I might as well just tell
you and get it over with.” He paused, like he was taking a deep breath, but his chest was still. “Your mother got a phone call from Gail’s mother. It appears that Maya’s tutor, Jefferson, is dead.”

“Andrews?” Like there was more than one Jefferson tutoring Maya. Like I hadn’t been living for hours with the reality of what he’d just told me.

Mom nodded. Dad leaned against the bar and looked at me. He’s like that—he’ll move away from you when he’s most concerned, as if to give you extra space in which to soak in his compassion.

“He’s dead?” I squeaked.

“Yes,” Mom said. “And we want to know where Maya is. It’s very important, honey.”

“Did you know him well? Was he a friend?” Dad asked.

I shrugged. “He was Maya’s tutor. Big man around school, too. Hard to miss him. Oh god. This is for real, huh?”

“I’m sorry, honey,” Mom said.

I knew this had to be a perfect performance, that I had to be careful not to overdo it. But a strange thing happened—hearing the news coming from them was almost as surreal as learning it the first time. Even though they weren’t telling me anything new, the fact that we were having this conversation still shook me. And that helped make my lying more convincing.

“How did he die?” I asked.

“Apparently, the police located him at the bottom of a ravine,” Mom said.

“What was he doing at the bottom of a ravine?” I asked.

“Drowned,” Dad said. “Or maybe hit his head. Someone called in a tip—that’s the only reason they knew there was a body to be found at all. Simon Lawrence—Gail’s dad—is on the police force, so he had some of the—details. It was an accident, probably. Did he seem unhappy or withdrawn recently?”

“No,” I said. “Why would someone call in an anonymous tip? Doesn’t that make whoever it was the killer?”

“Tips aren’t always anonymous, Abby,” Dad said. “Though I can see how you’d just assume so. This one happened to be, yes. It’s probably from someone who didn’t want to get entangled in a police investigation. I can’t say I entirely blame her.”

“Her?” my mother said sharply, tension setting the silk of her shirt to fluttering. “You didn’t tell me it was a woman. It couldn’t be Maya who called it in, could it?”

“Margot, please,” my father said.

“Don’t. You can’t say that I’m being ridiculous. We haven’t seen her in days, and she’s not answering her phone.” Her fingers flicked against one another, finally occupying themselves running up and down her pearls like a rosary.

“I’m sure she’s not involved,” Dad said, looking right through me.

“Of course not,” I said. I clasped my mom’s hand. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at my dad. I’d always been intimidated by him. Desperate to please him, too, but
scared. He seemed invulnerable, a mover. He did things in the world, while I always had to resort to the strategies of the weak: sulking and pleading. Caring. I knew if he kept staring at me he’d see the truth in my eyes and act on it, start flipping out. All I wanted was for everyone to stay as calm as possible. I needed time.

“If you learn anything, Abby, you’ll inform us right away,” Dad said. He stared at me with that penetrating look of his, handsome features overwhelmed by broad cheeks and rolls of wet black curls.

“The days of Maya leaning on me are long gone,” I told him. “I don’t think you can count on her reaching out.”

If my parents were feeling any pangs of regret at not having kept their younger daughter nearer to them, they had gotten used to them long ago. They really had done everything they could to help Maya. They’d tried being super-strict. They’d tried being super-lenient. They’d sent her to a small horde of therapists, tidy beige PhD business cards cramming an envelope in the hardware drawer. Finally, the only way for my parents to keep her in their lives at all had been to give her a long leash. If they didn’t complain when she only came home every other day, she wouldn’t punish them by hiding herself away for two weeks straight.

“Guess we’ll have to find her another tutor,” I said.

My parents stared at me. “Abby, that’s not funny in the least,” my mother said.

I let some of the tears I’d been holding back release. “I know. I feel so weird. I think I’m in shock. Jefferson can’t really be dead.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom said, hugging me.

My father downed his soda. “I can’t even imagine what the Andrewses are going through.”

“I can,” Mom said. And she left it at that.