* * *
When Caroline returned to school after Yom Kippur, bright orange dots raced through her mind’s canvas. No matter how she tried to force her thoughts into calm blues and greens, the awful orange kept coming back.
Lara grinned at her before they parted ways. “You nailed bossiness lessons and you’re going to do great with that boy . . . I mean, with Micah.”
Her sister was very clearly not a fan of Micah, but Caroline appreciated the effort nevertheless. She thanked Lara and went off to start her day. Throughout first period, Caroline kept replaying their bossiness lessons from the previous night.
“You can be plenty bossy,” Lara had told her. “You tell ME what to do all the time!”
At first Caroline had protested. With the two of them it was always Lara who led Lara-and-Caroline, as she knew perfectly well. Lara came up with the big plans, and then Caroline helped carry them out. That was just how things were. And yet . . . maybe things could change. Maybe they had already changed. After all, Caroline had befriended Micah and pulled off two admittedly ill-advised pranks before her sister even discovered it. Now she just needed to find a way out, while still somehow managing to keep Micah as a friend.
She saw him for the first time in Experimental Art class. At the moment they were making sculptures out of recycled materials. Caroline still wasn’t sure what she really wanted to do for the assignment, but Micah was quite enthusiastically stacking towers of bottle caps.
“I want to talk,” she told Micah. That was exactly as she’d planned.
“Cool,” Micah replied. He added another cap to his stack, which was now teetering rather perilously in his work space.
“Okay. Good,” Caroline said.
Taking in a deep breath, she turned back to the tablet screen. There was so much she wanted to say. Lara would be able to find the rights words, she knew. She just needed to remember Lara’s bossiness lessons.
She began to type.
“I like being your friend. But I don’t like some of the things we’ve do—”
Before Caroline could finish typing the word done, a stampede of unpleasant sounds came. From the spot right next to her.
The strings securing Micah’s bottle-cap sculpture had snapped, causing dozens of caps to scatter across the floor. With every CLUNK of a cap, Caroline felt her nervousness heighten. Her hands flew up to her ears to cover them, but it didn’t do much good.
Things were too loud, too difficult, too everything.
She whimpered out loud and raced away from their table. It helped, but only a little.
Micah said a Very Bad Word. “Sorry, sorry!” he said. “I should have seen that this wasn’t going to work. I didn’t mean to upset you. Sorry.”
Since Caroline had abandoned her tablet amid all the ruckus, she couldn’t really respond. Not right away. She wasn’t sure what she’d say anyway.
After taking a proper number of deep breaths, Caroline returned and helped Micah collect all of the bottle caps. Eventually things settled down to something that resembled normalcy.
She deleted the words she’d typed into her app and for the rest of the period, she said very little.
Lara would be so disappointed in her. She just knew it. What was worse, she was disappointed in herself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE RIGHT WORDS
“So, how did it go?” Lara said. “Did you get to be properly bossy?”
Caroline winced. Her sister looked at her expectantly, hands flapping ever so slightly. For whatever reason, Lara obviously cared about the whole Micah situation. She’d gone out of her way to help, but now Caroline had to admit she’d failed.
“It didn’t go at all,” Caroline said shortly.
“What? Why not?”
Sighing deeply, Caroline tried to explain the whole bottle-cap situation as best she could. It wasn’t a great excuse, she knew, but it was something.
As Caroline described the situation, Lara nodded. “Ugh, sudden noises.” Lara shuddered dramatically. “I don’t blame you for getting upset. I would have hated that too.”
At that Caroline managed a small smile. Lara might be infuriating at times, true. But she still understood Caroline better than anyone else. She probably always would.
“I wish I had been able to say something to him,” she said. “But it was already so hard to find the words and then when the whole bottle-cap thing happened, I just felt so many different things and . . . I don’t even know. It’s probably stupid to get so upset by bottle caps.”
Lara frowned at her. “It is not stupid. And we are going to figure out a way to solve the Micah Problem. I promise.”
When Lara used that voice, there really was no talking her out of anything. And indeed, once they got home Lara plopped down in the den and immediately focused her attention on the Problem. (The way Lara said it, a capital letter was necessary, even in Caroline’s thoughts.)
Caroline wasn’t sure all of this would do much good. But she loved her sister for it anyway.
“We are going to figure this out,” Lara insisted.
“Okay,” Caroline said. She wasn’t sure what else there was to say at this point.
Lara, of course, had plenty of contributions to the conversation. She flipped open her detective notebook, as if Caroline’s inability to stand up to Micah was just another mystery in need of investigation. She scribbled something down in the notebook, then chewed on the cap to her pen.
“I have a question for you,” Caroline blurted out.
“Hmm?” Lara looked up from her scribbling. “Yes?”
“Why are you working so hard to help me?”
At that, Lara finally put down her pen. “Are you saying that our sisterly bond isn’t enough to inspire me to help you?” She stuck out her tongue. “Why, I am very nearly offended by that.”
“I certainly don’t mean to question our sisterly bond,” Caroline said, repressing the urge to roll her eyes. “But why are you trying to help me? Lately you haven’t been doing that very much at all.”
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