QUESTION FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION: Can everyone else forgive me too?
Lara had thought that Caroline forgiving her—finally!—would mean a return to normal-ness. Or at least something close to normal-ness. Unfortunately, no such thing occurred.
It wasn’t that Caroline was mean, exactly. Of course, even when they were officially fighting, Caroline hadn’t been mean. She’d just avoided Lara at every possible opportunity. But now that they’d made up, Caroline showed little inclination to do any of the usual Lara-and-Caroline–type things—a fact that frustrated Lara.
Which was how she ended up spending Yom Kippur afternoon with Aviva, baking cupcakes. Well, Aviva did most of the actual baking. But Lara cracked eggs and stirred bowls at her cousin’s instructions. Quite generously, she didn’t even complain about Aviva being bossy.
Since it was still Yom Kippur, Noah and the grown-ups were nowhere to be found. They were fasting and didn’t get to eat until sundown. Lara supposed all the cupcake smells were quite unpleasant to endure under the circumstances. Even if they would all be eating them later.
Next year, Lara realized, she and Aviva would be thirteen. That meant they would fast too. It all seemed so odd and adult-like. Lara wasn’t at all sure she felt like an adult. Did adults make so very many mistakes?
At least Dad’s absence from the kitchen meant that Lara could avoid the bad feelings that overcame her every time she saw him. She needed to apologize to him. She knew she did. If only she could figure out how.
Right as Aviva started taking the cupcakes out of the oven, Caroline appeared. In no time she was enlisted into decoration duty. To no one’s surprise, her icing skills proved far superior to Lara’s and even Aviva’s.
Lara relaxed ever so slightly. Maybe everything wasn’t quite back to the way it ought to be, but at least Caroline was okay being in her general proximity. That was a definite improvement over the previous ten days.
“That’s a very nice tree,” Lara told her, admiring her sister’s cupcake.
“It’s not a tree,” Caroline informed her.
“Oh. What is it, then?”
Caroline did not respond until she had completed the cupcake. Now that the zigzaggy lines of icing were setting, Lara couldn’t even guess what her sister had created.
“Nothing in particular. It’s just a pretty pattern.”
“Oh.”
Since when did Caroline make drawings of nothing in particular? Probably around the same time she started playing pranks on people with her new friend. Lara tried to stop herself from frowning. But she could not stop herself from talking.
“I thought you forgave me,” she blurted out in the midst of a rapidly failing attempt to make an icing-leaf.
“I did.”
Lara knew she should just let it go. But after ten days of waiting to have a real conversation with Caroline, she wasn’t in much of a letting-things-go mood.
“Well then why aren’t you acting like it?”
“How am I supposed to act? I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” Caroline said.
“Yes, but . . . ugh. I don’t even know. Forget it.”
Face uncomfortably hot, Lara concentrated on trying to salvage her now-lopsided leaf. Meanwhile, Caroline began a new cupcake without further comment. Lara could tell that Aviva was following all of it, but she didn’t say anything either. Thankfully.
After they completed a full tray of cupcakes, Aviva got up and busied herself with cleaning the kitchen counters. She insisted on doing all of it herself because apparently Lara couldn’t be trusted to use a washcloth without disrupting the “system.”
And still Caroline did not speak.
Only the ping of Caroline’s phone interrupted the silence. When Caroline glanced at the screen, she made a not-happy face.
“Who is it?” There was really only one person who ever texted Caroline, but Lara figured she should ask anyway.
“Micah.”
Lara frowned. She had plenty of things to say about Micah. Of course she did. Still, right now she needed to be a good sister and earn Caroline’s forgiveness. It was, perhaps, not the best time to unleash all of her Micah-related opinions. However justified those opinions might be.
“Are you still friends with him after, well, everything?” Lara asked.
Instead of answering the question, Caroline stared at her phone as though it might suddenly grow feet and start tap-dancing through the kitchen. She glanced at the screen but did not type a response for a good minute.
“Yes,” she said finally. “At least, I think so. It’s complicated.”
Well, Lara had plenty of ideas for how to un-complicate the whole situation. Dumping Micah as a friend would certainly un-complicate things, would it not? But even though part of her really, really wanted to tell Caroline she ought to do just that, she stopped herself.
It was time to be advice-giving Lara, not opinion-giving Lara.
“Well, do you want to keep being friends with him?” she asked.
Caroline’s answer came quickly. “Yes. I do. At least, I think so. But I don’t want to keep doing mean things with him. I just want to text and sit with him at lunch and things like that.”
“Then that’s what you need to tell him. And if he’s not okay with that, then good riddance to him.”
There. Lara was pretty good at the whole advice-giving business, if she did say so herself.
Yet Caroline still looked doubtful. “It’s not that easy. I’m not like you. I can’t just say what I want to say all the time. Even with my tablet.”
Lara paused. Lately, her big mouth had caused catastrophe. Multiple catastrophes, in fact. Yet Caroline wanted to be more like her?
Well, maybe that was something for Lara to work with. An opportunity. Lara summoned every bit of confidence she possessed. She did her best to ignore the whispers in the back of her mind that Caroline didn’t want her help. Would never, ever trust her again.
Because Caroline had forgiven her. And she was going to prove that she deserved it.
“Yes, you can. You can tell Micah exactly what you mean,” Lara told her sister. “And I’m going to help you do it.”
Caroline’s face twitched, but then broke out into a smile. “All right then,” she said.
