He was still sitting there, but the book was back in his hands, and he had stopped playing music.
“What have you been working on lately, Jo?” Beth asked, to change the subject from matrimony and riches.
A lot of things, I wanted to say. I was only a few paragraphs short of finishing my longest piece, an essay on female sex trafficking in Cambodia. I’d spent more time on this piece than anything I had written before. I knew that Mr. Geckle would never allow me to publish it in the school newspaper, so I was planning on sending it to Vice myself. It was a long shot, and they would probably never even read it, let alone publish it, but sending it in was something I had to do for myself. Once I did that, I would be ready for anything. Mr. Geckle could only control my voice within the walls of White Rock High.
“Nothing special,” I started, even though I was lying through my teeth. It was special; it was the most special thing I had ever written. I felt it deep in the whites of my bones.
“I read your paper about sex slavery. The one on your laptop,” Amy began. I whirled around and grabbed her arm. The soda can dropped onto the floor, and fizzy orange liquid sprayed onto the tile.
“You what?” I shouted at her. She pulled back from me, but I held her arm.
“It was open on your laptop!” she yelled in her defense.
“I don’t care!” I let go of her when I felt Beth’s eyes burning on me.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want anyone to read it; I was mad because I thought my laptop was the one place where I had privacy from my three sisters, and Amy had just ripped that away from me.
Meredith came barreling into the kitchen and I stepped back, away from the orange puddle on the floor.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Meredith stepped around the mess and let out a deep breath before anyone answered her.
“Nothing, Meredith. Everything is fine,” Beth said, and grabbed a towel hanging on the oven door. She laid it down, and both Amy and I stopped glaring at each other as Beth cleaned up our mess.
“Who was fighting? I heard yelling.” Meredith’s voice was steady, and she wasn’t in the mood for our games.
“No one.” Beth bent down. “We were just messing around. Don’t worry, we’re cooking and getting everything ready for tonight. I’m almost finished with my cheese ball.”
Meredith looked at the four of us and shook her head. I figured that she didn’t believe Beth but didn’t feel like fighting on New Year’s Eve. Meredith had a glass of clear liquid in her hand, and I thought she should have another. She had never before looked as tense and tired as she did lately.
She told us to be careful and not make any more messes and left us in the kitchen.
I gave Amy a look and turned back to the window. Laurie was gone.
I went to my room and closed the door and wrote to forget how mad I was at my sister.
7
meg
My makeup was done and I had just finished blow-drying my hair. While I was waiting for Jo to get out of the shower and curl my hair, I picked up the book she had slid under my pillow on Christmas. Honestly, I hadn’t opened it since then, but I had a few minutes, so I lifted the black cover and turned to a random page. It began:
my favorite thing about you is your smell
I read the words in silent awe, and then read them again, and Shia’s hands, dirt under his fingernails, came to my mind. He was always dirty, always planting something or helping some old woman or other move her furniture around or some such. He always smelled like the earth, like a garden.
I couldn’t believe he was back—and worse, I couldn’t believe that I was thinking about him right now. John would be home in a week to see me. I should be thinking about John’s clean, strong hands, and the way he always smelled like fresh cologne and laundry detergent.
He wouldn’t dare to wear ratty T-shirts or dirty sneakers the way Shia did.
“Jo!” I yelled.
It was eight thirty, and everyone was going to start arriving at our house around ten. By “everyone,” I mean a few of the neighbors and their kids. I didn’t invite any of my “friends,” since half of them weren’t talking to me over a rumor that wasn’t even true. That’s what happens when you’re labeled the school “slut” in a small Army town. It follows you past graduation. I didn’t mind so much and still don’t, really. If they were truly my friends, they would know that I wouldn’t do what they are accusing me of doing. The same thing happened to me at Fort Hood, and it was so much worse; the rumor mill here seemed like child’s play.
That night we would have followed our tradition of celebrating at home, but Jo and I got a last-minute invite to the Kings’ house for Bell Gardiner’s engagement party, so we decided to stop by there for an hour, then make sure we were back home by eleven. I didn’t want to go, especially because I was afraid to see Shia there, but I had assumed since the party was at the Kings’ huge estate, many people would be there and lessen my chance of running into Shia.
“Josephine!” I shouted again.
While I waited for her, I flipped to another page in the book she’d gifted me.
The poem there was simple, and began:
how can our love die . . .
Stunned, I turned a few more pages.
he isn’t coming back . . .
Underneath the poem was the word wilted, as if the poem was signed by Wilted. I thought of the bouquet of flowers on Mrs. King’s nightstand. The card was signed by Shia, and the red petals were wilted. I touched the corner of one and it broke off, falling onto the wooden dresser. I thought about how he left so suddenly and how much time I’d wasted wishing that he would come back.
Trying to push those wilted flowers and his shining green eyes out of my head, I slammed the book shut and tossed it onto my bed just as Jo came strolling into our room.
“I’m here!” she said with a smile.
Her hands were full. In one hand she held the curling iron and her phone, and in the other she had a handful of Bugles. Her long hair was down, touching the top of her hips as she moved toward me and stood behind me at the vanity. Her face was freshly scrubbed pink, and her pale skin was glowing.
She would never listen to me when I told her how lucky she was to have such flawless skin. Beth and I suffered from acne the most, but mine had cleared up since I started working at Sephora, where I got to try all the new skin-care products from the best, most expensive brands, for free.
“Your makeup looks so good,” Jo said.
She plugged in the curling iron, and I parted my hair, clipping up the top of it so she could curl the bottom.
I stared into the mirror and smiled at my sister. We had been getting closer lately, and I was starting to see a change in her. She was no longer my little Josephine who ran away from home when Old Mr. Laurence trapped a raccoon in a cage and wouldn’t let it go. She was growing up so fast, and that meant I was, too. I was ready to be older; I hated being on the cusp of being a woman, because I felt like one but wasn’t treated like one.
“Big curls, please.”
Jo nodded and went to work.
“Do you think Amy will be able to stay up tonight?” I asked as she curled a chunk of my hair. The strands were hot when she let them out of the barrel and they fell onto my shoulder.
Just as she started to answer, Amy bounced into our bedroom.
“Jo. Meg. Whatever you do, you have to tell me how the party is.”
“We will. Are you trying to stay up? Or will you be asleep when we get back?” I asked as Jo wrapped another piece of my hair around the metal barrel.
Amy shook her head and moved around us. She grabbed a tube of lipstick from my vanity and leaned down into the mirror as her small fingers pulled the top off, revealing a deep purple shade.
“I’ll be up.” Amy’s fingers turned the tube around and around as if she was trying to figure out how to use it. “You guys will have all the fun. Did you hear that Bell Gardiner is engaged! I can’t wait to see her ring! Ugh, you’re going to
have way more fun than me.” Amy sighed heavily and licked her lips before she smeared the stick across her lips. When she was done, she pulled back and looked at herself in the mirror.
“It’s going to be a blast. And of course we know, Amy. We were invited.” Jo rolled her eyes.
Amy pouted. “Stop rubbing it in.”
I didn’t particularly care about Bell Gardiner’s engagement, or her at all. She was one year older than me and had supposedly been going to move to Florida for college, but she only made it as far as the French Quarter. Rumor had it that she worked at a bar downtown, right in the center of the Quarter, somewhere between Bourbon and Royal. Of course she was a bartender, like my aunt Hannah.