for the last month.”
I shake my head. “Sarina’s gone.” I can’t stop staring at the faded satin, the fraying edges. She really is gone.
“I know, but you could send them to her.”
“No. Tell Natalie she can keep them.”
Bryce doesn’t fight it. I know he gets a kick out of making his sister smile, and this will probably send her over the edge.
“Do you want to go shoot hoops?” he asks.
I try not to let the shock show, but he has to see it. “Yeah. Do you want to come in and wait while I change?”
He looks into the front room, and I can see him considering it. But then his eyes fix on something behind me and he shakes his head. “I’ll wait in my car.”
I turn around and there it is: the wedding dress in all its space-age puffball glory, draped over the armchair. She forgot it. I can’t believe after all that freaking out about getting it back to Kristen, Annie actually forgot it.
On the court, we don’t say a lot. There is almost no trash talk, which is unusual and unnerving enough to make me feel like I’m about to get punched again. And that screws up my already rusty game.
“So, how was Argentina?” I ask when we stop for water.
“Good.” He takes a swig from his water bottle. “I’m not going to ask how your summer’s going.”
“Okay.”
“Because I really don’t want to know.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t even want to think about it, actually.”
“Okay.”
Without warning, he chest passes the ball hard enough to knock me back one step. “Let’s play.”
We play, and I lose. It’s not like I’m letting him win, but I think he’s thinking about what I’m doing with Annie, and he plays better when he’s furious. And unfortunately that makes me think about what I’m not doing with Annie, and I play worse when I’m distracted.
Still, despite all the silence and awkward exchanges and spurts of aggression, it’s nice to play. It’s nice to be with someone who isn’t Annie. I almost didn’t realize how much I’ve missed him, and since my family left I’ve been living in a vacuum of human contact without even realizing it. I talk to a possessed cat for companionship.
“So when do you leave for Greece?” I ask after I’ve conceded defeat and he’s told me I suck.
“Day after tomorrow. I won’t be back until right before school starts.”
“Lame. Did I tell you I’m not going to basketball camp either now?”
“No. Why? The wife won’t let you?”
“My dad won’t let me.”
He shrugs and stalks off with the ball. I gather my stuff and follow him back to the car.
When we pull in to Wisper Pines, the sun is sinking over the woods like it’s dipping into fire. The trees are burning.
Bryce rolls to a stop and I unbuckle my seat belt. “I can’t believe I believed you,” he says softly. “All these years, I believed the whole best friends crap.”
I stare straight into the sun, the flaming trees.
“Is she happy?” he asks. “Never mind. She is.”
I don’t correct him because I want to leave the car with my jaw still attached to the front of my face. But in my mind, I see Annie’s eyes and the dullness that settled into them on the day she left everything for me. I’m trying, every day I try, but I can’t chase that gloom out. It’s like a bruise that won’t fade, not for skateboarding or cartoon marathons or fake rings or wedding photos or strawberry Pop-Tarts. And in my mind I see the mostly blank canvases she stares at, brush in hand. Definitely not happy.
“Have a good time with your grandpa,” I say, getting out of the car.
He drives away.
I’m reading my SAT prep book when Annie gets home.
“Was Kristen pissed about the dress?” I ask.
She closes the door behind her and looks around the room like she didn’t hear me. Like she doesn’t know where she is.
“Because at this point,” I continue, “I think we should just put it on eBay to see what we can get for it. As long as we don’t post a photo, we have a chance at making, I don’t know, fifty dollars.”
“What are you talking about?” She looks slightly more centered now, but her eyes are brighter than usual, like she’s about to cry. Or she’s already cried. Of the two, I really hope it’s that second one. She flops down beside me on the couch.
I point to the dress, still draped over the armchair where she left it.
“Oh,” she says. “I don’t know. I didn’t actually go to work. I lied about that.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“Um. Okay.” I turn the volume down, not because I want to, but it seems like I’m supposed to. On second thought, I should probably turn it off. I do. “So, do you want to talk about it? I don’t care if you want to go be alone for a while or whatever. You don’t have to lie and tell me you’re going to work if you want to disappear for . . .” I glance at the clock. “Six hours? Wow. Where
“Mr. Twister. And then my house.”
I let this sink in, feeling a little disoriented by her disoriented-ness. “I don’t care if you go to Mr. Twister or your house. Do you need me to go get your stuff out of the car?”
“No,” she says, turning to me and pulling her leg up under her. “I decided I didn’t need it after all.”
“Okay.” I have no choice but to turn sideways too, but she’s sitting too close, and her eyes are so watery and intense I feel like I’m staring into the ocean and facing a firing squad at the same time. “What’s up?”
“I haven’t been honest with you.”
“So I’m hearing.”
“Or anybody. Or myself. Mostly myself.”
I wait, guessing the truth by the weight of her silence. I think I know. It’s over. She has an angelic glow and a guilty quivering lip. I wish she’d just cry already, but she looks like she’s reigning it in to deliver the death blow first.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Satan’s Cat slinks into the room, looks from me to Annie to me again, and slinks back out.
I want to pretend. That statement is so ambiguous it could apply to anything, to the distribution of chores on the job chart, to sharing a cell phone, to anything else that isn’t the one thing we both know she’s talking about. I’m a jerk, and I want to force her to spell it out.
But her eyes are like sapphires when she’s about to cry, and I can’t.
“I know,” I say. The words vibrate in my throat and echo in my ears. That must mean that this is real, that I’m really speaking them. “I can’t make you do this anymore either.”
“You never made me do any of it,” she says, closing her eyes as the tears finally spill over. She falls in to me. I fight not to shudder as she presses her face in to my chest, her palms open against my chest. My skin is wet where she’s crying through.
“I shouldn’t have let you do it,” I say. I put my arm on her back so I can feel something. I’m numb everywhere except for where we’re touching. “I just wanted it so badly.”
She’s bawling now, but it’s okay. Better at least to be holding her while she does it instead of watching her. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbles into my ribs between sobs. “I didn’t realize how hard it would be to lose so much of myself. I didn’t even know I had that much to lose. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry.”
“But I wanted to do it for you.”
“Stop. It’s okay.” But I don’t want her to stop, only because the more she cries the easier it is not to think
