“Supposed?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
“I have to go,” I say, and head back to my bike. I stare out at the water, at the Ferrisvil e dock growing closer and closer.
I don’t want Claire feeling sorry for me. I don’t want her saying that she knows I used to believe in love and al that crap. I don’t want to be reminded that I used to think it was possible for a guy around here, around Tess, to look at me and not see her.
I don’t want to think that once I was stupid enough to believe I could be with someone who wanted my sister and make them want me.
me in the kitchen poking pieces of toast into the jel y jar and then eating them.
“You’re supposed to put jel y on bread, not put the bread in the jar. And you did eat something else besides that, right?” Mom says, and sits down across from me, giving me her Mom stare. She’s real y good at it.
“Why are you home early? Is Tess—?”
“She’s fine. Your father and I—we decided to come home after we talked to the doctor.”
I look around for Dad, but he’s come in and gone straight into the living room. Something’s definitely happened. “What did the doctor say?”
Mom gets up. “I’m going to make a sandwich. Do you want one?”
“Mom,” I say, and she looks over her shoulder at me from the counter and gives me a smal , sad half smile.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about. We just … the insurance isn’t going to cover as much as we thought and—wel , Tess’s been in the hospital for long enough that we’re being asked to consider other options.”
“Other options? Like what?” I know for a fact that Mom and Dad have read everything they could get their hands on about comas. I also know that they’ve gone to see a bunch of other doctors, and always come back from those meetings grim-faced.
Mom doesn’t answer.
“Mom?” I say again, and Dad comes in from the living room, his mouth curved up in this weirdly familiar smile that, for some reason, sends a shiver racing through me, a flash bolt of panic-fear under my skin.
“I bet you have homework,” he says.
“Yeah,” I tel him, getting up and turning away so I can’t see his face and that smile. “I do.”
It’s silent, so silent, as I walk up to my room and shut the door, but as I creep out of it and back toward the stairs—I shut my door before I went through it because I knew what was coming—I hear my parents start to talk.
“I hate the idea of Tess going to a home,” Dad says. “She’s not—there’s stil a chance. She could stil wake up. And I don’t want her to think—”
“She knows you love her,” Mom says. “She knows you won’t give up on her. We al know that.”
“Katie—” Dad says, and Mom cuts him off, says, “Dave, I just—I’m not you, al right?”
Silence fal s again, and then I hear Mom sigh, hear her cross the room.
“I wish—” she says, love and sadness in her voice, and Dad says, “Me too,” his voice smothered-sounding, like he’s speaking from somewhere far away, or holding something back.
Like he’s trying not to cry.
I creep down the stairs a little more, and when I crane my head toward the kitchen I see them holding each other, Dad resting his head against Mom’s, mouth pressed to her hair.
The smile he was wearing before is gone, wiped clean, and I realize where I’ve seen it before.
Tess. Her senior year, and especial y before graduation, before she left for col ege, that was how Tess usual y smiled. I just—I never realized it was strained. That it wasn’t real at al .
My skin prickles even though it isn’t cold, and I’m chil ed to the bone.
I move silently back up the stairs, head into my room, and close the door behind me.
her straight, shiny hair. I wanted her ability to always look perfect. I wanted her smile to be mine, I wanted people to see me and have their eyes light up.
I wanted al of those things, and never got any of them.
Tess was kind about it, though. It was her way. She would loan me her clothes, and not tel me to go away when I saw her with her friends. And when guys came to see her—and they always came to see her—she’d introduce me to them.
People in Ferrisvil e see Tess, even think “Tess,” and they think “perfect.” And she was perfect.
At least, she was in public.
At home though, sometimes, Tess would—wel , she had a streak of darkness in her. Sounds normal actual y, I think, but the thing is, she never showed it outside the house, never took it anywhere that people could see. Not ever.
It wasn’t anything big at first. She’d get upset over something and just retreat, fal silent and go into her room, act like she’d vanished even though she hadn’t. And then, if someone cal ed or came by, she’d … I don’t even know
