“Be quiet, Lara,” Caroline said.
For once, Lara was quiet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: THE MYSTERY OF MISTAKES
LOCATION: Kitchen, breakfast time
EVENT: Everyone hates me.
No further investigation required.
Lara knew that her siblings could not possibly have held a meeting in the middle of the night, a meeting in which it was decided that they would not be talking to her for the next day. (Two days? A week? It couldn’t possibly be more than a week, could it?) But it certainly felt as though such a meeting had taken place.
First, she tried making conversation with Benny. Lara figured that he couldn’t possibly resist the opportunity to talk. And yet, resist he did.
“Are you playing any good video games, Benny?”
Nothing.
“How is your Rube-whatever machine going?”
Nothing.
“Do you want some of my hair clips for your machine?”
Still nothing. Honestly, Lara wouldn’t have believed him capable of such a long silence.
Noah snorted. She glared at him, but her heart wasn’t in it. After all, a voice whispered to her. What were you expecting? For them to throw you a party?
Aviva—of all people!—appeared to take pity on Lara. “It is so nice to be going back to school today, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice squeaking.
“Not really,” Lara said.
Even Aviva gave up after that.
Dad gave her a weak smile as he munched on his toast, but the attempt only made the boulder that had taken up residence in her chest even heavier. Truly, she would have preferred that he yell at her. That, at least, would have felt like a proper punishment.
After such a morning, Lara looked forward to school. At least at Pinecone Arts Academy she could be invisible as usual, instead of being the target of everyone’s irritation. Right now, Lara welcomed invisibility.
Yet even school felt different. For one thing, both Dad and Ima drove the kids to school. Instead of just dropping them off by the curb like usual, Ima actually parked the car. She and Dad walked with Caroline to the front door, flanking her on both sides. Caroline fixed her gaze on her sneakers, and Lara could see that her hands trembled more noticeably with every step. Their destination was not a mystery.
Not your problem, Lara told herself. Caroline can deal with it.
Except that Caroline’s problems kind of were Lara’s problems too, weren’t they? Caroline wouldn’t be in this situation, being marched off to Principal Jenkins’s office, if not for Lara.
Lara walked down the hallway. Past Principal Jenkins’s office. Then she glanced back to make sure her family was nowhere in sight. And she promptly turned around.
As she lingered outside of the office, Lara did her best to appear as though she had a reason to be there. She dearly hoped that no one would question her. She didn’t have a decent excuse. Or any excuse.
Now Lara needed to decide how close to the door she dared go. From her current position, she couldn’t hear much of anything. The wooden door was awfully thick. Yet if she tried to creep any closer, she risked exposure.
As she slowly stepped toward the door, it occurred to Lara that she’d become rather familiar with spying ever since she started FIASCCO.
But this wasn’t a FIASCCO mission. It was far too depressing for that. Besides, Caroline was on the other side of the door. In a real FIASCCO mission, the sisters ought to be together.
Lara’s face was just inches away from the door when she heard Ima’s voice. “. . . thankful for your understanding, Principal Jenkins.”
“Of course,” the principal replied.
“Lara?”
She spun around to find Aviva, frowning as she clutched a piece of paper.
Lara leaped away from the door. She could not allow her parents and Caroline to overhear her and Aviva talking. She wasn’t even supposed to be here!
“What are you doing here?” she asked Aviva once she felt sure they were out of hearing range.
“I am dropping off a note from my Ima explaining why I was absent on Rosh Hashanah,” Aviva said. “Why are you here?”
“Same reason,” Lara said.
Aviva cleared her throat, but did not otherwise comment on Lara’s obvious lie. It was generous of her, really. Lara felt another pang of guilt as she remembered her harsh words: Why don’t you write it down? In English? Oh, right. You can’t.
Her cheeks flushed. Now, more than half a day later, it all seemed so absurd. Lara couldn’t even remember why she’d been so angry in the first place. Not really.
With Aviva there, she couldn’t really continue her spy-on-Caroline-in-the-principal’s-office mission. She didn’t really feel like it, anyway. So she waited as her cousin handed in her note.
“Can I ask you a question?” Lara asked as they left the office.
“You may,” Aviva responded, because of course she would.
“Why are you being nice to me?” she blurted out. “After . . . you know, what I did?”
Aviva slowed her pace, but only slightly. “Because it’s the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” she said after a brief pause. “It’s important to use this time to reflect and start acting, well, better. For the new year.”
She sounded as though a teacher at Hebrew school had called on her to explain the High Holidays, and yet still managed to seem completely sincere. Lara could not help but wince. Although she was not exactly an expert on the matter herself, she had to think that beginning the new year by being a mean blabbermouth was not exactly a positive sign of things to come. She supposed she just wasn’t as good a person as Aviva.
“So, if it weren’t for Rosh Hashanah, then you wouldn’t be nice to me?” Lara asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Aviva hesitated before speaking again, and when she did, her voice dropped in volume. “I hope I would still be nice to you. Right now you just seem so . . . sad.”
Lara ground her teeth together. Caroline’s anger toward her had been awful, but Aviva’s pity just might be worse. Way, way worse. She considered walking away
